one of three thousand and sixteen

Is there anything else to write about today? For someone who, in her heart still considers herself a New Yorker, is there anything else to even think about today?

Carrying September 11 in my heart seems to get worse as time goes on, not better, and I have no idea why. Maybe it's having left New York, and missing it so much. Maybe it's having had another child. Maybe it has to do with the footage from which, despite my knowing better, I can't turn away. Each time I think I've seen the worst of it, I see something worse. It's like there is no worst of it. Yet I watch again and again, like it's my penance for having escaped the experience.

Last week, or maybe earlier this week, Andrew and I watched the last part of Ric Burns's documentary about New York City on PBS -- the segment about the World Trade Center. Yes, there were shots of the planes. And of the fires. And of the people jumping. And of the buildings falling.

But there was also something I'd never seen before. Someone I'd never seen before. Two years later, although I'd seen a lot, I hadn't seen the woman in the black pants and the white shirt. It's for her that I wrote today.

In the film, the interviewer talks to a man who tells us that, among the most horrible things to comtemplate about that terrible day is the fact that so many people survived the original impact, only to be trapped, fully conscious of their situation, knowing that they were likely to die, trying to reach out to their families one last time.

To punctuate his point, the filmmaker then cuts to a shot of the giant plane-sized hole in the North Tower. The fireball has subsided, but the fires are burning above. And there she is, at the very edge of the hole, standing with her hand on her hip, looking out at the City below. Standing there, a thousand feet in the air, peering over the edge where the wall had been only moments before, likely thinking to herself, "Well, what in the fuck am I going to do now?"

Surely she died on September 11, one of 3,016 who did. Not as an old lady in her bed, but as a young woman, a wife and mother maybe, toe to toe with the edge of the world and no way to get down.

Just as surely, there are broken-hearted people out there today who miss her. Maybe they saw that footage and know about her death. Maybe not. But they definitely know that she's gone. Just like that. In a blink. Maybe for them, like for me, it gets worse, not better, as time passes.

Today, I join them in their mourning. The loss of 3,016 people is an awful thing to contemplate. But it's just a number, a fact. The loss of one person, well, that's not awful or incomprehensible. It's painful and it's sad. For me, making today about grief instead of fear feels somehow like the only way to get through it with any meaning. I hope that you get through, too, in your own way.

Rest in peace, lady in the black pants and the white shirt.

Posted by volfie at September 11, 2003 01:03 PM