Memories of a devastated New York City on 9/11’s anniversary

Is it not strange the things you remember from scenes like that?

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Memories of 9/11 over a decade later

Photo by Caty Bartholomew

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There were scores of people on the viewing platform. Many were comforting each other amidst hugs and silent tears, but there was one middle aged, olive skinned mother standing alone and weeping loudly.

Ever and anon she would slap the outsides of her hips with clenched fists. I've rarely witnessed such public pain.

Away far below the searchers in their yellow safety helmets were swarming like ants over the bleeding grey face of Ground Zero. There were a lot of them and they were constantly placing pieces of debris on a conveyor belt.

Skulls? Bones? Body parts? One did not know what the belt was ferrying away from the scene.

There was the pungent stench of fish from some nearby fish market and that was surreally apt for the dreadful place and time. Already, on one of the hoardings, there was a dull copper plate profile honoring all the firefighters and police and first responders who had died in the bedlam. And the mother wept on and on.

I clutched my microphone and I said all I had to say. I emptied my head and my mouth of all I was seeing and hearing and feeling. The team recorded it all. There were silent policemen standing around. They were standing stiffly to attention for the most part.

Many who climbed the wooden stairs shook hands with them or simply patted them on the shoulders en passant with shared silent sympathy for their losses.
I only recall a few of things I said in those minutes. One was about those little birds down below and all the cars still parked in Fulton Street with their windscreens covered in gray dust as they waited for drivers that would never return.

And the smell of fish. And the way the tall skyscrapers on the edge of Ground Zero, towering over all, resembled tall dignified nuns standing at the graveside of two of their own as a mother wept and tears fell.

And men in yellow helmets worked like farmers tilling soil among pulverized bone splinters and spaces once filled by lost souls and spirits.

And then I had nothing left to say and they switched off the recording machine.
There was a silent policeman standing close to me all the time. He had an Irish face on him. When I concluded he reached out his big hand and shook mine so powerfully that it hurt a bit.

There were tears in his eyes and there were tears in mine too when it was over. The policeman did not speak at all. He just shook his head sorrowfully up and down. On the way back down the stairs I stopped and looked into the old cemetery. The small birds of resurrection were singing away among the tombstones.

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