Weight of the World

I am just plain not ready to deal with the anniversary of 9/11. I wasn’t ready to relive a moment of it when the films came out, and I’m not any more ready now. It’s not like I was there. It’s not even like I knew someone close to me who is gone. Yes, we all knew someone who was impacted and likely gone, but I didn’t suffer a personal loss on a devastating level. But I’m still not ready to look back on it and watch documentaries, films and specials on it. It’s still too real, lurking in the shadows like a cloud, the specter of the worst day imaginable, and oh God, it was. I can’t breathe, and I feel sick when I think about it, and I know how inadequate this sounds, but it’s the best I can do.

I worked within view of Logan Airport, and I heard the news that there was a plane crash from a woman who resembled Grimace in every possible way, including the ruddy complexion and exaggerated pear shape. She was stone-faced and fearful, and I distinctly remember thinking something snarky about McDonald’s, and I know how cold-hearted that sounds, making fun of someone at all, much less on a day as awful as that one, but it’s the ugly truth. And then and as the events unfolded – so slowly, it seems now – I remember actually trying to get back to work, because I just couldn’t quite face it.

I edited an analyst presentation with my vice president. I made notes on how I would manage a conference call the next day. I thought of anything but what was happening until I just couldn’t fake it anymore, it was a while before I joined my colleages in the conference room and sat, riveted to the television, waiting for more planes to strike us down.

My mom called the front desk. The receptionist was a dumb sort, not prone to having the slightest clue as to what was going on, and if she were at all honest about where she was when the planes hit, and the drama unfolded, she’d tell you that she was huddled under the desk listening to bad music and reading romance novels, oblivious to the horror raining down on us. When my mom called, for some reason the receptionist told my mother that I was out of the office that day – on a flight that morning, in fact. Where, my mom asked. To Los Angeles, I think, she answered. She still somehow had no idea what was going on.

If I’d been flying to Los Angeles (which I wasn’t even scheduled for, that day, or any day in the near or distant future, thank you crackhead receptionist), it would have been on American Airlines Flight 11. My mother thought I was dead, plunged into the North Tower in an airplane. Panicked and desperate, she called my cell phone. Busy. She called back begged for my direct line and mercifully, got me live. She reached me – asshole me, who was still working on an analyst presentation, chained to my desk, because again: denial and also, I had a manager screaming at us all to “Get your asses back to work! This is not an emergency!”

Because of that analyst presentation, I got to experience the most surreal, miserable moment of my entire life. I heard my mother’s voice. I heard her screaming in my ear, thinking that I was actually dead, and it’s something I honestly don’t ever want to experience or even think about again. There was relief, but the weight of it all was too much, and I’m not even sure she believed it was me, that it was my voice. She must have asked me a hundred times, my first and last name, over and over again, afraid she got someone else. She couldn’t breathe. I heard her talking about how all she could think about was that she knew I was afraid to fly. How she knew that I wouldn’t have survived even as far as the impact out of fear, and how she felt she would have failed me if I’d died that way, though I’m not sure why.

I can’t even talk about that part that much, and I won’t beyond this, because it was horrible – sickening, and painful and easily one of the hardest, most strangled moments of my life so far, because she really thought I was dead and yet, there I was. I heard my mother’s reaction to my death. And after it was over, after she’d accepted I was alive, all we could think about was how many families made that phone call and were disappointed. How many families didn’t get that moment of relief mixed with heart-squeezing sadness. I can’t imagine, and again, I’m sick, just sick when I think about it.

After sitting in stony silence in front of the television with my colleagues for a spell, I finally left the office at the urging of my husband – then-fiance – despite being perpetually screamed at to “stay and work! This is not an emergency!” I’ll never forget seeing him running towards me with his little backpack on, looking to the sky thinking, as we all did, that surely there must be more out of that airport, and what if they miss? Or worse, what if they’re coming for us? No one knew. We ran down the street like we were being chased, even though there wasn’t a single indication otherwise. We just didn’t know.

And then we went home. And then it was over, and we watched the rest unfold from the comfort of our living room, together, safer than so many other people.

I know that there are other nations who suffer tragedies like this much more regularly than we do. I know that we are but one small cog in a giant wheel, and the politics that have followed are rich, varied and not always pleasant. But that day – oh, that day, that hour, that afternoon – was terrifying in a way that I can only hope that we never see again.

Five years ago. Hard to believe.

*This woman is where I got the dreaded, oft-used Grimace analogy from. I know it’s mean, and I should be stoned, and feel free to do so if we ever meet.

**Erasure & Alana Davis. Not together.

12 comments September 10th, 2006