Posted by SHAWN MANNING
Link: ME AND THE DIVAS
on 10/29/2002, 8:30 pm
205.188.209.37
A Letter to All, From the WTC,
It has been one year since ignorance and hatred destroyed so much and so many, forever altering our lives. I don't think there is one of us that views ourselves and each other in the same light that we did a year and a day ago. As a full cycle of seasons and holidays and birthdays and anniversaries since that still-unbelievable morning draws to a close, many of us are reflecting on what we've learned, how we've changed, and what is most important to us. I want to take this time to share with all of you some of my personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the past year, having spent so much of that year at the World Trade Center.
I have been part of a Structural Rehabilitation Team at the WTC for 50 weeks now, and each day of those past 50 weeks are as vivid in my head as yesterday. First days at work are usually marked by introductions and orientations and ice-breaking jokes among your new colleagues. My first day was one of silence, shock, and the often-dizzying realization of where I was. Mentally, I knew exactly where I stood; yet my surroundings were foreign to me. Reminders of what had just happened were everywhere. There were Marines on every corner; M-16's in hand, checking my ID every block. West Street was a mountain of destruction 70 feet high. Paperwork from a thousand offices, all bearing an address of 1 or 2 World Trade Center were everywhere underfoot, and that orange-gray dust, which is still on my work boots, was 2 inches thick on the street. And then there was the smoke, and its smell. So thick I couldn't see 10 feet in front of me at times, and so acrid my nose burned for months. Some of my sweatshirts still have that smell after multiple washings. And then there was the sound of the siren, echoing in all the emptiness surrounding us, heard 10, 20, 30 times a day, signaling that another former neighbor of ours had been found. I can still hear that siren in my head, too. Being here day in and day out, these surroundings eventually became somewhat normal to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. But even now, a year later, I have a very uncomfortable feeling each day I come to work, like I shouldn't be here. In fact, no one I work with should be here.
What has stayed with me most, though, are my interactions with others working at the WTC. Back in October I was eating one of my many lunches in the Salvation Army tent, sitting with another table of ever-changing faces. These construction workers/Firemen/Police Officers/Volunteers were discussing the pride that each of them felt, working down here, helping the recovery. Just then, a man whose name I never got but I know to be a retired Firefighter from Long Island, replied through a cracking voice "**** pride and duty and brotherhood - I'm here looking for my son," and then began to cry in front of all of us, shamelessly. He was not the first grown man I saw cry down here, and he definitely wasn't the last. I aged 10 years in those first few weeks. But what balanced out the endless drudgery was the kindness of total strangers. People from all over the country left their husbands and wives and children and parents behind to come here, to this once smoking mound of total devastation, to make us all lunch, to cheer us up, to hang up cards of support from children around the world. Their utter selfless dedication still makes me smile, and while faces have faded a bit, what they left me with never will, and I have tried every day since to pay their kindness forward.
If any of you are remembering a loved and lost one today, please accept my most heartfelt condolences and know that while I can never feel what you are, I do understand.
There are two things I have learned this past year, both of equal importance. I have incorporated them both into my daily life and they have served me well, and I hope that they may do the same for you and whomever you may choose to pass this on to. The first is, and some of you may have heard me say this, "Live, Live, Live." The single greatest way to honor those lost and the lives they were robbed of is to live ours to their very fullest, enjoying each moment, reveling in each day as if it may be our last. The other thing I've learned is to tell those that you love that you do, tell those that you care that you do, and tell those that you miss that you do, and tell them often. We may also not get that chance again. So, to all of my family, related and chosen, I love you. To all of my friends and acquaintances and faces from the past, I care about you and hope you are doing well. And to those for whom it has been to long, I miss you, especially the one I met 103 days ago on that first June night - you know who you are.
I have been down here too many days for too many hours, especially today, so I'm going to turn off my computer and take a half-day for myself and what really matters - my friends and family. I encourage you all to do the same.
Stay well, and never forget
..ll
Christopher
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