InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "fhqwhgads!"

theatresm (theatresm) wrote,
@ 2007-09-11 21:48:00

In Memoriam and with Hope
"A couple leaped from the South Tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped. So many people saw this as a scar burned onto our brains. But a man reached for a woman's hand and she reached for his hand, and they jumped out the window holding hands. I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers, but I keep coming back to his hand in her hand, nestled in each other with such extraordinary, ordinary, naked love. It is the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and tragedy. It is what makes me believe that we are not fools to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fire, to believe that who we are persists past what we were, to believe against evil evidenced hourly that love is why we are here. "

Brian Doyle
adapted from “Leap”

text of the full essay here.

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memories from France
(Anonymous)
2007-09-12 08:35 am UTC (link)

Thank you, theatresm, for that reminder.

I hope you won't mind if I add my personal recollections of that day and its aftermath.

An ocean away, as soon as I got over the initial shock of the news over the Internet, my next move was an attempt to get in touch with one of my best friends in Manhattan. Of course using the phone lines was useless, and I had no idea if emails were getting through. I could only hope that in her eighth month of pregnancy, my friend had already decided on a leave of absence from her downtown job.

At the time I was living across the street from the Institut du Monde Arabe, and I wondered the next morning what the neighborhood reaction might be. My husband and daughter were stopped on the street (it was no secret that we were the local eccentric Americans) by numerous veil-wearing women we didn't even know by name, apologized to, and assured that what had happened the previous day was just as horrific to them as it was to us, and they prayed that none of our relatives or friends were hurt.

Some days later, my friend was finally able to get us a message. She had, indeed, been at work that day. She had watched the second plane crash from a highrise window just a block away, and then she ran for her and her son's life. Ran down flights of stairs for fear she could otherwise be trapped in an elevator, trudged up block after block on her way toward Midtown because any other form of transportation was impossible. Though sympathetic onlookers offered her places to sit down or take drinks of water, she refused to stop, fearing if she did, she'd never reach a safe place. When she got to lower Midtown she kept walking to 59th and Columbus Circle and took an express train to 187th, where she found a working payphone and asked her husband to meet her, because she just couldn't walk those last few blocks to their apartment alone.

The entire time she could both see and feel the baby kicking and screaming in terror within her. Neither she nor her husband slept for a week after that. And finally, when they did, the nightmares were far worse than the insomnia.

I still don't believe in a god, but if I did, it would be because my friend did not drop dead of a heart attack or go into premature labor that day, but did give birth to a beautiful, healthy son one month later. I do, however, believe in the power of love to transform us and make us capable of going far beyond the limits of expected human endurance. I suppose it is no wonder that I felt I had finally found someone I could believe in enough to take my and my husband's place should we both die, and asked her to take my daughter as her own should that unfortunate event come to pass. Knowing that she said yes, is one of the greatest comforts in my life.

(Reply to this)

	ann_mcn 2007-09-12 05:16 pm UTC (link)
	That is lovely. Thank you. (Reply to this)