By Reid Collins on 9.12.02 @ 3:18PM
A lasting, honest image from September 11, 2002.
It was a welter of words. The solipsisms of the anchors, telling
us of their grief over a year's time, how they really, really felt
and repeating the cliched assurance that that day changed us
forever without ever saying exactly how, in what way, and
maundering on to the next mawkish self-conscious interview.
It was the decency of a President who spent an hour and a half
with families in the ground zero circle, unself-consciously doing
the right thing by those who had lost so much by hugging them,
signing their cards. Later, from Ellis Island, he would repeat his
hallucinatory belief that the passengers of flight 93 committed
suicide by driving their plane into the ground rather than allowing
it to fly to some unspecified target in Washington, D.C. Oh well,
we must all have an illusion or two to make the date bearable at
all.
The illusions must remain until we are sane enough to have a
long, demythologized look at these events and study with cold eyes
building codes, stress loads, insulation, emergency service
communication. Later. For now we live with our illusions. And I
could have borne the day were it not for Marianne.
At 17, Marianne Keane is a child of our time. She had a
stepfather, Franco Lalama, an engineer for the Port Authority, who
died in the attack. Strike that: was killed in the attack. Strike
that too: was killed by the attackers. Miss Keane had written a
posthumous farewell for her stepfather and she read it yesterday in
that welter of images and words. I wish I hadn't heard it. I also
thank God I did.
"Franc," this young woman wrote, "as I look back on these days,
I realize how much I'll truly miss you and how much I truly loved
you. You were the best father I could ever ask for. I miss you and
I hope you didn't hurt too much. Love, Marianne."
And there it was, stripping away all the euphemisms blowing in
the dust of ground zero: I hope you didn't hurt too much.
Stark, honest, a realization reaching into the truth of the moment
and wishing it not so. A young woman still child enough to speak a
truth all had avoided and will continue to avoid in order to speak
of it at all.
You broke my heart, Marianne. And for that I thank you.
topics:
NATO
