Seven Years

This is Jonathon Briley. He jumped to his death from Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001. There is a photograph that was taken of him during his fall; it is called “The Falling Man.” It is so disturbing I cannot possibly post it here.

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Because everything seemed so normal, I drove Maddie to daycare. I had the day off because of a doctor appointment – my shoulder had been hurting - and probably some other reason, too.

Maddie was three; we always talked in the car rather than play the radio, that’s why I was surprised when I got to daycare and Madge was visibly upset, saying that an airplane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

I’ve never been to New York. To me, the World Trade Center was a couple of large buildings in Manhattan, buildings I was familiar with because of the terrorist attack there several years earlier. I had no real connection to those buildings, never had a reason to think about them, and certainly not the people within them. So, when I heard the news, I was upset, thought, “What a tragic accident.”

I got back into my car and drove on to the doctor. But now that I had the radio on, I found out that a second plane had crashed into the other building. As my terror mounted, I tried to narrow this to a point that made sense. But it wouldn’t go.

At the doctor’s office, the nurse said that my nurse practitioner’s brother was thought to be at the World Trade Center at that very moment. When the nurse practitioner came in I felt silly as she examined my shoulder, like I didn’t deserve to be there. I finally said something to her about her brother, told her my problem was minor, maybe I should come back. She was calm, told me not to worry.

Back in the car I tried calling David. He worked downtown at the time and as more details came to light, I became more and more frightened at the fact that he worked in the midst of a big city in a high-rise. The lines were overwhelmed and I couldn’t reach him. I called and called.

I went to my office. Though I was off that day, I felt a pull to be around people I had grown close to over the past few years. They were sitting in the large meeting room, huddled around a small TV, watching through the bad transmission, what was happening in New York City. One of my co-workers sat, pale and quiet; both of her children lived in Manhattan and she could not reach either one of them.

It was so sunny outside, a late summer morning that gave no hint of the impending fall, the darkening of the days to come. I drove to daycare and picked up Madeleine. I couldn’t reach David, couldn’t find my husband, and I listened to the radio, fearful that I would hear the words “Sears Tower” or “John Hancock Building.” Maddie and I returned home, and as I sat in front of the TV that day and waited, the air outside remained clear and quiet. Then David was there.

It seemed as though Chicago itself had sent everyone home. Trains were clogged, people waited in fear, nervousness buzzed like static electricity. The president on TV: promises, rumors, errors in reporting.

There was a church not too far from our house. I had to go. The Bible church was a stranger to us, but I felt a pull to it. David and I walked, Maddie rode her little bike, and I kept looking at the sky, hating what I was half-expecting. I was half-expecting planes to fall. Even though no planes were allowed anymore, I waited for them. At church we cried, so many of us cried. It felt lame, a nothing way to help. What good were our prayers going to do now? People were dying all around the sites, had jumped to their deaths rather than suffocate and burn.

A couple of days later I began to dream of Afghan women. I dreamed of bombs going off in Middle Eastern neighborhoods where people were just trying to live. I dreamed of stifled lives, of women hidden behind black sheets. I awoke queasy and afraid.

One year later, my family and I stood outside in a crowd of people gathered in remembrance. Several area churches had collaborated on this assembly. The worship director of the church we had begun attending regularly sang a song that was so beautiful it made my heart hurt. That was surely a gift to us and those who had perished a year before; as good a voice as he had, and as many times as I’d heard him sing afterward, I never heard a voice like that again.

Now it’s seven years. Seven years ago, a man, one of about 200 other people, had to break a window so high above the ground that death was non-negotiable, and decide to leap out of it rather than face the other horror that awaited him. Sometimes it’s a wonder we can just go on.