Smoke rises from a building and we think of them. It can be any building, anywhere. A plane rises from the ground and we think of them, and pray they did not see death rushing toward them with such swift certainty.
It is so hard NOT to imagine their final moments, our minds somehow veer away from them, so heart-breaking are they to contemplate. Instead I find that my mind has hovered around another event these last few days, one that took place nearly 100 years ago, also in lower Manhattan:
A fire broke out on one of the top floors of the Triangle Shirt Factory on March 25, 1911. The workers trapped there, with flames raging behind them and firefighters’ ladders far too short to reach them, leaped to the sidewalks below and met death there.
There is a poem called “Shirt,” written by Robert Pinsky, that touches in part on this tragedy. He speaks of a witness in the building across the street, who watched a doomed young man help first one girl and then another step up to the windowsill, “as if he were helping them up to enter a streetcar, and not eternity.“ Before jumping himself, he held these two girls out, away from the wall, then let them drop. “A third, before he dropped her, put her arms around his neck and kissed him.”
Then he held her into space, and dropped her too.
Some say the only way out is through; that if we are to find ease on the other side of sorrow, it will only be by allowing ourselves to feel that sorrow wholly.
In studying this other tragedy, I have been able to get at the pain I feel over its modern counterpart.
Those families must have felt things very much like the families of the September victims. The next morning’s New York Times said “grief-stricken crowds gathered at the site of the factory, crying the names of their loved ones.”
I looked up these names: Julia and Lizzy and Abraham, some of them were, Anna and Rosie and Jacob.
Not a week after the attacks, I attended one of the strange memorial observances so common that autumn. Like most of the others, it was a wake without a casket, a funeral without an interment. At the Mass’s end, the priest bent into a microphone. “Take some flowers,” he told us all – because there was no grave on which to lay them.
There will never be graves for many who met death that day. Met it at the Pentagon or in the Towers. Met it in the soft soil of Pennsylvania, where thousands of our Civil War dead met death too.
I think of Walt Whitman, who during that war came to the Capitol in Washington expressly to nurse and comfort the sick and dying soldiers filling its halls. In “Leaves of Grass,” he spoke of the “beautiful uncut hair of graves.” Whitman could see beauty anywhere. And he knew how to befriend death, as we all must learn to do, early or late.
I think of the weather we had that week, the way each day dawned so clear and brimmed with a crisp pale-amber light.
There is that light to think of now.
And there is that image, given us by our own modern poet.
I refer to the kiss, and then the letting go.
All the ones we have ever lost: they kiss us now. They ask us to let them go.
September 12, 2008 at 2:10 am
You reminded me of another tragic story – a fire in a Catholic school (Chicago? Early to mid 20th century sometime? I am very weak on details). The classes had 50+ kids each, the building was old and wooden, there was no escape plan and the window sills were too high off the floor for most of the kids to even try climbing to the window to jump. I read a book about it once and never forgot it.
I burned my customary candles on my front stoop in memory last night.
September 12, 2008 at 2:23 am
A beautiful tribute, Terry — sensitive and heartfelt. Thank you!
September 12, 2008 at 6:39 am
Dear T-
September 12, 2008 at 7:13 am
A powerful tribute. It was very moving the way you connected the tragedies of 9/11/01 and 3/25/11, then connected these two events to the tragedy and loss we all must face in our own lives. As more anniversaries of 9-11 pass, there are fewer and fewer tributes and remembrances. Thank you for providing a fresh and meaningful reflection.
September 12, 2008 at 9:30 am
What a sensitive tribute.
September 12, 2008 at 9:53 am
How moving and beautiful.
September 12, 2008 at 3:29 pm
As I mentioned in the C disc blog, I thought of Neilie yesterday and kept crying. The tears suprised me yet there is so much stress going on, the horror awaiting those in the path of Hurricane Ike, fires, gas explosions, car crashes; in the blink of an eye we can lose someone. None of us live thinking it might be a loved one’s last day so we forget to treasure what we have while we have it. My son returns from his vacation tomorrow and will pick up his cat (who earned my ire by decorating my light colored carpet with a stain I cannot get out) I will hug my son so tightly as well as his girl who really did take my mother’s blood a week ago; the nursing home was on her route. No sleep for me on Tues. after browsing through pictures my mother let me take from her house (which will be sold to pay for the nursing home expenses) brought back so many memories, smiling faces of those gone before; a picture I’ve always loved of my Downs Syndrome brother at age 2 with a melting ice cream cone and the “creamy” mustache on his sweet face. Sarah Palin’s son reminds me of him. So much history in old letters, one that goes back to the late 1800’s! I looked at those things until 4 a.m. and couldn’t sleep so yawned through my class in medical terminology; another sleepless night last night. But what I meant to say when I started here is that every time I think of Neilie on that plane, I wonder if her last thoughts were of her darling first baby girl, if she knew she was going to die. She spent her next to last day running to raise funds for a charity, cancer, I think. Talk about saints…..
September 12, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Terry
A beautiful tribute written by a beautiful
writer. We too, here in Taunton, lost
Peter Gay who left behind a young daughter
and wife, His elderly father’s picture
came in the paper and the family planted
flowers, I lost another friend in 911
she never made it out, we camped together
at the Cape, her husband still can barely
talk about it, he will, in his own time
Thank you for your articles, you are so
gifted.
September 12, 2008 at 7:05 pm
What a beautiful essay.
Terry, I thought I’d steeled myself against the powerful emotions from that day and you forced me to revisit and remember, despite my selfish defense mechanisms.
There is so much to contemplate about 9/11.
Thank you for reminding me that we must engage on the issues and learn from history.
September 13, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Hi Terry,
Nice job. We need it and you have the skills. Thank you!
Cathy
September 13, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I remember watching various tributes on the television in the lobby of the M/Hotel that I work at during the night shift.
I was in such a state of contemplation that a guest had to almost snap me out of my “trance”. I was so affected by it on the actual day, and I am no less affected by the memory of it even today.
After glimpsing at the screen, the woman who brought me back to the here and now frowned and bemoaned “that was such a tragic day,and I am afraid the young children today are going to forget all about it as they get older”.
I tried to be neutral about what she said but I felt something burning inside. “My daughter is almost 12″ I replied. She was almost 5 when 9/11 happened, and even today she says she doesn’t know who she feels sadder for, those who died, or those who they left behind. She, like me, says she will never ever forget it, and I believe her”
The woman although still very understandably saddened was silenced. I wasnt even trying to silence her. Yet I have a very strong feeling in my gut that even the kids who were my daughter’s age or even much younger, perhaps too young to grasp what was actually going on.. knew something very bad was happening, and they were very frightened… heck, I was frightened too! But they couldnt put it into words, and I am positive that many, if not all of them still have very strong sentiments about what happened that day, as well as the after math. Many knew children have lost atleast one parent, many people have lost a sibling, a best friend, or a parent lost a child. How can anyone at any age not be affected by this and try to forget it? Why would they Want to? Even if they were mere toddlers, it hit them just as strongly as it did us grown ups, and I have a very strong feeling that it will be these kids as well as the students of today who will keep the memory and the flame burning to honor both the victims of 9/11 and their families as well as the who US of A and also the several countries who lost thier own on this tragic day.
No, the children of today will Not forget 9/11, nor will they let their own children or anyone forget either!
Thank you for posting your memorial, Terry!
Patty Schlossberg
September 15, 2008 at 6:11 pm
What an image of the kiss and letting go.
I will never forget how everything seemed to change in a moment that day. Some of us moms were having having a back-to-school coffee on a front porch right next door to yours after the neighborhood school bus had pulled away. We were ignoring the phone that kept ringing and finally someone went to answer it. It was from a spouse trying to make his way out of NYC…….turns out three people from the neighborhood were either in NYC or at the Pentagon and so our quiet gathering hastily dispersed. Then, we later learned with great sadness that David’s good friend was onboard Flight 75.
Thank you for helping to make peace with the memories, Terry, in such a touching tribute.
October 3, 2008 at 3:28 pm
mmmmm…the kiss…letting go… I don’t want to let go, and yet know I must, know it’s the right thing to do. But…it’s so hard.
You’re right Terry, and no one writes it more eloquently than you.
Thank you, for your grace.