On a Clear Day You Can See

Friday was a blue and white day of cool temperatures, sunny skies and the drying breezes of autumn. My colleagues and I sat around a beat up picnic table and shared a meal of hot dogs, fried chicken, baked beans, and salads, battling with the bees for their share of the sugar. Behind us, the more athletic co-workers were whomping volleyballs over a net, and the "young turks" were on the softball field, vying for the most pulled ligaments and sorest shoulders in the mid-30's set. The company handed out play money to pay the Good Humor Ice Cream truck and we stood shoulder to shoulder in line like little kids waiting for our Italian ices and frozen popsicles. As the sun melted the ice creams off the sticks and onto our hands, which we lazily licked, someone mentioned that the day was exactly like September 11th, 2001.

And indeed it was. As I drove to work that morning, the sun was warm and there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a day made for cutting school, skipping work, and spending one more afternoon with my feet in the water at the beach, or sitting on the porch and sketching the last of the hydrangeas that were drying on the bush. It was such an ordinary day, a day to go to work and look out the window longingly, a day to remember to pick up bread and milk on the way home, and a day to make certain you went out for lunch to enjoy the weather now that summer's humidity and temperatures extremes were behind us.

Was there ever such a day again?

Three years later, we spend another beautiful morning watching the TV and listening to the reading of the names of the dead. The fathers, mothers, wives, children, sisters, brothers, grandparents, husbands, and loved ones sit on chairs and hold photos of their dead. Some cry openly; some clench one another's hands; some stand alone, staring off into space into their private hell. The names are read in blocks of twenty, with the speakers adding their own loved ones names at the end. A fireman's bell is rung to mark the moments of the planes entering both towers and the moment of each tower's fall.

People of every race and nationality, every age, shape, and class approach a reflecting pool and lay their flowers into the water. Soon the surface of the water is covered with bouquets, balloons, and mementoes, like a bathtub filled with tears. The TV camera pans away and the screen fills with a shot of a single sailboat gracefully sailing through the harbor, and the empty backdrop where the towers would have been.

As the names are read, an odometer clocks in my brain: dead, dead, dead, dead. In my mind, I add to the list are the 1000 soldiers killed in Iraq. We have more dead than we can memorialize; more dead than we can hold in our hearts. My mind cannot wrap around the number and I line up shoes in my mind, empty shoes on a street corner, jumbled together in a mass grave outside the fallen towers.

Halfway through, we shut the TV, go upstairs and wash up and get dressed for the day. There are groceries to be bought, cleaning to be picked up, school supplies to be purchased, and meals to be cooked. I spend the rest of the morning finishing up some art work, doing mindless tasks like setting grommets and threading pieces together like puppets. Soon we'll leave for softball practice, and come home to grill some swordfish and potatoes.

A few blocks from me live two families who lost their fathers, both brothers at Cantor Fitzgerald. They were the kind of families that had SUVs in the driveway, back halls littered with soccer balls, lacrosse sticks, and school bags; houses with kitchens that fit ten at the dinner table. They belonged to country clubs, went to private schools, bought their children's clothing in boutiques, and used the elliptical trainer religiously for an hour every morning before work. On the other side of town is a large family crowded into a small apartment. Their sons were dishwashers in Windows on the World. Their wages were the difference between collecting food stamps and paying with cash. Their grandparents lived with them, an aunt, and their father, retired on disability. They sent some of their pay home to the Dominican Republic, and made sure that their siblings had a new pair of sneakers for the first day of school.

Is the grief deeper in either household? Is the loss stronger, fresher, rawer under either roof? Are the Cantor Fitzgerald widows able to sleep more easily with the strong cedar shake roof over their heads? Does the father of the dishwashers find solace in the check he received from the government for the loss of his sons?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I don't know the way through a grief like that. I only know what is told to me: a step at time, day by day, talk about it, seek help, look to the future. All platitudes that mean nothing as you drown in memory and loss. I hope that tomorrow they can get up and water the lawn, walk the dog, go to church, and spend Sunday evening paying some bills and talking on the phone to loved ones far away. I hope that when they get up to go to work on Monday, or to wait for the school bus on the corner, that there is some bright shiny piece of happiness somewhere in their minds, like a piece of faded red satin ribbon found under the sofa after the Christmas gifts are boxed up and put away. May they hold in their hearts some fragment of love that beats warm and hot, even if it is just a single fragment of hope for the future that allows them to get out of bed in the morning and hold their three-year olds in their arms.

On a clear day you see it all: the glass half full, the glass half empty. And you just want to hold onto the glass as tightly as you can without causing it to shatter.