A September Sky

I still have my father-in-law’s shoes in a box in the cupboard of my writing room. I haven’t looked at them in a couple of years, but they’re there, covered in the dust of the World Trade Center towers. Sometimes I wonder why I keep them at all, but it was in these shoes that, in 2001, he made his way down from the fifty-ninth floor of the north tower. He sloshed through the water at the bottom of the building. Already the neighboring tower was down. He made his way through the storm of debris. He still recalls the strange calmness of it all: thousands of people moving in the new white atlas of downtown.

…

It is still a difficult thing, these days, to pull out the shoes. I still think that every touch of them loses a little more dust. I am paralyzed by the notion of what the dust might contain – a resume, a concrete girder, Sheetrock, a briefcase, a pummeled earring, an eyelash, another man’s shoe. They sit in the cupboard behind me, in my writing room, over my left shoulder, a responsibility to the past.

- Colum McCann –

With the ten-year anniversary of September 11th upon us, there have been countless stories, uttered remembrances, memorials, and discussions of “where I was when…” Those of us that survived, that watched that horrible day unfold, have a responsibility. We carry a responsibility to the past, to all of those innocent civilians who lost their lives on just an average, idle, sunny Tuesday.

Earlier this week, I was taking the T home from the office, as I do every evening. I sat, watching my fellow passengers and commuters, as they went about their business of newspapers and novels and ipods. It could just as easily have been any one of us on that morning ten years ago, I thought. It was nothing more than a chance, a slight of hand, a twist of fate that determined who was on those flights leaving Logan, Washington Dulles, and Newark airports that fateful morning, and who trudged into the office – as they did every single day – at the World Trade Towers or the Pentagon.

On every anniversary of September 11th, I’ve thought about the victims, the tragedy. This year, while those thoughts are still very close to my heart, I also find myself thinking so very much about all those that were left behind. I remember the thousands and thousands of photos posted around New York City in the days that followed the attacks, families desperate to find their missing loved ones. I think of the family members who received last phone calls from sons, daughters, husbands and wives aboard those hijacked planes. I think of the unexpected goodbyes, the bravery shown during an unimaginable moment.

I imagine the utterly unimaginable. I think of the mournful, difficult task of picking up the pieces – on September 12th and every day since. I recall a friend of mine, one whose cousin died in the towers, telling me about the days immediately after – first with the searching, the constant searching. Her cousin’s cell phone still worked, directing every caller to her voicemail. For days she and her cousin’s parents would call thinking that maybe – just maybe – she’d been lucky enough to get out of the towers in time and that maybe with this phone call she would answer. And then there were the other days that followed, once it was clear she would not be answering her phone. My friend spoke of the days filled with the mundane yet horrific tasks of cleaning out her cousin's closets, parceling out her clothes, her books, her cds; wondering what to do with the average, ordinary pieces of her life.

There was a Boston University student on one of those fateful flights, a young woman who had graduated with me earlier that May. I reflect on all of the milestones, experiences, and life I've been able to live in these last ten years. Ten years she did not have, a life she never got, and all because she caught an early morning flight to the West Coast.

I think – what if it had been me? I picture my apartment in its current state, one that would have been left behind if I’d been the one scurrying to catch an early morning flight. It would sit, frozen in time, a glimpse into a simple, ordinary, every day life – a half empty bottle of lotion left on the bathroom counter, a dirty dish set in the sink, a book resting on a nightstand, a specific page dog-eared, an unmade bed, a grocery list stuck scribbled on a notepad. I picture these things, these little pieces of our lives and I think of the men and women who never returned to their every day lives, to the pieces of an existence, to the things, the people, that made them whole.

I think of all of us that are still here, all of us whose lives are divided into a before – September 10, 2001 and an after – September 11, 2001.

I remember. I mourn. I acknowledge. I will myself to not forget a single moment of that day and that morning that we lived through ten years ago. A day that dawned with a brilliant blue September sky.

This is our responsibility. The past demands it.