As 9-11 Draws Nearer, I Withdraw

Sunday will mark the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and I feel a sense of dread every time I think of it.  Me – several degrees removed from the suffering of the true victims.  I didn’t lose anyone, didn’t have to dig through the charred and flattened remains that no longer resembled anything recognizably human.  Imagine how those folks are feeling.  I see the photo of the smoking towers come up on the MSN homepage when I log in, and it just makes me want to log out again.  While everyone else shouts “Remember!,” I find myself wanting to forget, and it makes me feel almost as if I am blaspheming, unpatriotic. 

That day just brings back such odd and painful memories – the eerie silence in Herald Square, the teenage boy who, when our subway car emerged from the tunnel in Brooklyn, and we all shifted to the north side of the train to see the smoke cloud that had replaced the World Trade Center, said, “Oh my God, it’s really true.  It really happened.” 

I also think of the woman who asked me on my way to work that morning, in heavily accented English (she was either Middle Eastern or East Indian) the best way to get to the Trade Center once she got off the train.  It was difficult to determine her age, but I do remember thinking she was attractive.  I instructed her that when the train got to Park Place (where I would have gotten off, had our school not moved to midtown two years earlier), she needed to be in the front car.  She thanked me as she left, making her way forward through the cars.  I watched her until I could no longer see her.

I find myself wondering about that woman from time to time, and especially now, as this dark milestone comes closer.  I try to imagine what that morning was like for her.  Perhaps she was a tourist, following her guidebook, written in Arabic or Urdu, which advised her to get to the observation deck early, in order to avoid the long lines.  I have no idea how early the observation deck opened; my hope is that it wasn’t yet, and that she was standing in the lobby waiting when the first plane hit the building, rocking its foundations.  Were that the case she’d surely have been one of the first ones out to safety.

I pray she wasn’t one of those people that Univision showed jumping one hundred floors in order to avoid burning fuel.  They aired this footage until someone from the FCC instructed them to stop.  Apparently some images are too horrific and heartbreaking, even for the news.

It’s an anniversary I’d just as soon forget – not because I intend any disrespect to the memories of the fallen or their families, but because of all the pain it brings back up.  I imagine I can’t be the only one who feels this way, can I?