The 9/11 Slip

The time from when the first plane hit, until the first building fell is clear to me as if it happened this morning. But, besides my sensory memory, I don't remember anything about the hours between the collapse of the first building and the time I was brought to a hospital in New Jersey. Except the memory of reaching up to catch a slip - silk, I think - that floated right into my upstretched hands after it was blown off a woman as she jumped from the flaming tower three blocks north.

But it occurred to me yesterday, when I saw this plaque on a bench on Central Park, that, maybe, if I'd saved that slip, one of the families would have had something that belonged to their dead sister, wife, or daughter. I was sick with pneumonia and mercury poisoning, and still dazed when, a couple of weeks later, I threw the slip away, unable to figure out how I got it.

I apologize to that woman's family.

Fragments of my lost memory have returned in flashbacks brought on by certain sounds, or smells, or days with a bright blue cloudless sky, like today. Five years later, I still have the World Trade Center cough to remind me, as if ever I'd forget. And I don't really want the rest of that morning's memories back. But, oh, how I wish I'd saved that slip.

Comments

Posted by: Donna Tocci at September 11, 2006 4:36 PM

Posted by: Adriana at September 11, 2006 4:59 PM

Posted by: erica at September 12, 2006 5:09 PM

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