I did not set out to observe 9/11 yesterday. Around 9 a.m., as the memorial service was underway at Ground Zero, I drove east, out of Brooklyn, to the Hamptons, to visit with my father and his wife, and go the beach. After two years of being emphatically in town for this anniversary, I had decided to take advantage of my last full day with a borrowed Subaru, my folks' presence in Hampton Bays, and the post-Labor Day lull to get in at least one more trip to the Ponquoge Beaches, burrow my feet in the creamy sand, and swim in the Atlantic.
As I drove up the BQE and out onto the Long Island Expressway, I listened to Weekend Edition on WNYC-FM. A long segment was playing--interview with a NYC fireman's widow. She was complaining that now lower Manhattan looked just like any construction site, and that people were selling tourist trinkets on the streets around the WTC site. These offended her.
I thought, this is the living city, this is what happens, if anything it's reassuring to see people picking up the pieces of mundane life...of course knowing that one can hardly challenge grief, especially the grief of a 9/11 fireman's widow. I knew I was being cold.
I switched to the AM affiliate, to listen to the reading of the names of the murdered. Last year it had been the children reading the names of their parents (grandparents, aunts, uncles); this year the readers were parents and grandparents.
As each reader finished their list, they spoke the name of the person they had lost.
"...and my son..."
"...and my daughter..."
Speaking out these names one more time to the world--this person once lived. She was special, he was the light of our family. Sometimes the speaker called out the name loudly, sometimes with voices breaking. Couples invoked their lost children in unison. Sometimes, horribly, a speaker named two names. The messages often so simple and similar: "We love you, we miss you. We will always love and miss you."
I was struck by how grief can obliterate eloquence.
Some readers switched to a native tongue, often Spanish, to invoke the name of their son or daughter. Language mattered to communicating their messages of the heart.
All this carried very clearly over the AM waves, as for the first time in three years, I made an escape from the city on September 11, crying on and off all the way to Riverhead. How lucky I was to spend the day visiting with my family, swimming in the ocean and hearing the plain noises of the waves and the gulls and people talking.
Much later...driving westward towards home in the dark, the Tribute in Light became visible somewhere just east of the Queens line. I had been scanning the radiowaves for decent rock or pop, but with those beams of light now in sight, I felt a cliched desire for classical music, something that at least seemed more emotionally apropos.
Tuning back in to WNYC-FM, the evening music was Brahms’s “A German Requiem," in honor and mourning of the dead, perhaps including the death of the life we thought we knew.
In the extended entry, the email I sent out before leaving work on the morning of September 11, 2001.
-----Original Message-----
From: Emily J. Gertz
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 11:05 AM
To: xxxxx
Subject: NYC update
Well, as you might imagine, people are really scared here.
I'm fine. I'm in Manhattan. I just made it to work and emerged from the
subway to hear about the attack. Right now all the access on and off
Manhattan is shut down, so I'm stuck here. At work right now, where the
net connection is ok, but Lincoln Center is being cleared out and I'm off
to my friend Margaret's apartment, soon. I might be hard to reach and I
might not be able to get online again so I thought I'd write now.
For those of you who need to know: have spoken to Candy, who says Andrew
is fine. Have spoken to Margaret and Judge, both fine. Have spoken with
Lucy, who is inviting me to move to Mass. immediately. Cannot locate my
father or Anne, suspect they may have gotten trapped on the road and hope
they'll turn back to LI asap.
Although I am not much given to prayer, I am thinking about those in the
WTC and their families and friends. Both towers have collapsed. I am
very frightened to hear of the aftermath and to go down there and see the
familiar buildingscape altered forever by this horrifying event. Please,
all of you be well and careful.
love,
Emily
Posted by Emily at September 12, 2004 09:52 AM