On a day that, once again, feels rather apocalyptic, I remember well the other September 11th that felt like it would change everything. John and I were in our house in Portland, John on the computer browsing the news. I was in the kitchen with the refrigerator open. He said something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I said, probably another small plane incident. We weren’t too excited about it at that point, but we turned on the TV to check. We stood, my mouth literally gaping, as we saw footage of the towers collapsing. In the hours that followed, as we watched image after image of the unfolding tragedy, I thought often about the times I frequented the World Trade Center buildings during my summer job as a telephone systems repair person. I’d known people in those offices, up above where the planes hit. I used to sit in the concourses below ground, eating my lunch as I watched people, hundreds of them, coming and going as trains came and went. People who often frequented the shops and food centers on their way to wherever they were heading. Those images came back to me, time and again, over the days and weeks and months that followed.
My mother was late to work that day. She worked in a building not far from the World Trade Center, and she was on a subway heading down that way when the planes hit. She was caught in the debris clouds, filled with toxins and smoke that choked her and caused fits of coughing for days afterwards. She made it home okay, but I’ve often wondered if that was the day that, almost sixteen years later, might have resulted in her stage 4 cancer diagnosis in late December 2016. She was gone a month and a half later. This was a woman who ate like a monk and spent many hours walking all over Manhattan. She was incredibly healthy with no family history of cancer. No way to know, of course, but it’s something I’ve thought about.
I wrote my dissertation a few years later in order to earn my Ph.D. at Princeton. It was titled, “The Phenomenology of Evil,” and I used material from 9/11 in my research into the effects of that kind of intentional act. I read transcripts and watched videos, including a documentary titled “Faith and Doubt,” which was a powerful reflection on how an intentionally malicious act such as 9/11 challenges our faith, whether that faith be in God or in humanity or even in ourselves. I spent months pouring over transcripts and watching videos of those who’d lost loved ones or had been in the midst of the chaos or who had had to deal with the aftermath of the buildings’ collapse. I watched people jumping or falling from windows, listened to the grief of those who survived, read the words of those who attempted to find something meaningful in it all. I’m sure I, myself, took on such a subject matter in my own attempt to understand what we call ‘evil.’ I’ve seen much of it in my life. I still do. Not metaphysical, supernatural evil. But man-made, human-caused cruelty at a level that is incomprehensible.
So here I am, at home, with air outside that is not safe to breath, reading stories of unimaginable loss pouring in from many sources, with fires that still threaten so many. Still trying to understand what this world is all about. So many acts of kindness and selflessness, and so many hate-filled words and bizarre theories about why we are where we are.
I don’t really care to hear more of this, so not looking for anyone’s opinion. This is my testament to that day, in 2001, when we all felt, in our own way, that nothing would ever be the same. It is my testament to the people who died that day, who lost someone they loved, who were traumatized by the rescue efforts and anyone who was deeply affected by what happened. As I was. As my mother was.
I often wonder how many of those people I met in those towers survived. I have no way of knowing. But I think of them and remember them and hope they made it out.