10 Years

10 Years

Since that horrible day
When so many lost so much in so many different ways.

30 years ago, I lost 2 friends,
and plan to write about them later this month.

That year, my journey,
0utward,
led me to visit
Jesse in Brooklyn.

Jesse had a complete love of architecture.
I thought he should have been an architect.
In 1974, we went to an event called EXPO 74 in St. Louis.
They took old factories on the waterfront and were transforming them
into incredible living and retail spaces.
Jesse was always taking me along to these events he found.
He would explain all the finer points,
the architect, the style.
I was always eager to learn,
loving architecture myself.
Jesse took me then to the World Trade Center.
I saw it up close,
only once.
I only could see the bottom one third due to smog,
but what I saw
overwhelmed my flatland senses
of dimension.
I nearly fell over and Jesse caught me.
I could not look again without feeling dizzy.
I am grateful he brought me there and we stood together
once, there.

Now they are both gone.

10 years ago today,

I was working in the hospital as a UR nurse.
I reviewed patient charts, stood at the nurse's station
and was usually more or less detached from the floor nursing I had done for almost 20 years.
Still, my ears were trained to hear distress calls, escalating families or patients or staff.
All of the sudden,
the mood changed on the floor.

"Did you see that?"
I heard,
A patient had their TV on.
"Check room 9,"
someone said,
they have it on,
"Oh my God.............

It was a phrase you kept hearing or sometimes you would see just a stunned look,
by the end of the day we knew
or knew someone
who knew someone
who was there.

I watched the young new nurses and hoped there would be
nothing closer, nothing here.
A friend's son, a successful young man,
went to school with a whole bunch
who vanished that day,
she had a hollow look, before grief can even set in.

My husband at a customer's house,
her husband and daughter commute to Manhattan,
from Vermont.
The phones jammed until
finally news came they were OK.
The reality that we were more connected to that big city
than  I ever thought.

Then the silent skies.
Eerie.
Bluer than normal,
without contrails,
without the familiar engine noise
a familiar routine.

Then the smoke,
the wind coming north from NYC
subtle,
wondering did I smell something?

Not wanting it to be a burning building,
with people in it
that my friend's son went to college with.

The silence went on for a few days, then it was done.

The planes overhead started again,
I wished for silence again.

30 years or 10 years does seem to go by so fast anymore.
And yet,
those traumatic days, like 9/11,
full of profound sadness and robbing us of
trust
in other humans,
seeing the reality of how bad people can be,
we find that
no,
we have not forgotten.