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Downtown, angels swirl
Michael Daly- NY Daily News
Through the gray cast-iron fence around the cemetery behind St. Paul's Chapel, you saw that the rain-drenched grass was lush and bright green. Birds chirped and twittered. A squirrel scampered amidst the headstones, hopping over a bed of pink poppies and across a grave whose marker read:
"Nancy
Daughter of David and Maria Travifs
Who departed this life Sept. 25, 1790
Aged 2 years, one month and 10 days"
Your attention was then drawn to your left, where a row of street peddlers were selling World Trade Center souvenirs. A hand-lettered sign read:
"Big Sale!
Going out of Business
$7 Photo
Retail value $15"
Your eyes went from a sale-priced picture of the twin towers to the still-startling absence directly across Church St. You paused as a tour bus rumbled past and then you crossed to what many call Ground Zero.
Those who put in day after day recovering the dead and clearing the wreckage called this place the Pit or the Site. You remembered being down in there when the terrible task was nearly done, watching an earthmover cant the debris with impossible delicacy.
Firefighters then set to work with rakes. One paused in mid-stroke and bent over to inspect what might have been a bone fragment, but was not. He resumed raking with the minute care that had marked the whole monumental effort.
As the first anniversary of the attack neared, the workers reached bedrock. You could clearly see from the edge of the Pit the regularly spaced rectangles where the supporting columns had been set.
The morning of the anniversary, you descended the long ramp with a dead friend's brother. A gusting wind kicked up clouds of dust that swirled as if with the souls of those not yet recovered.
"Dust angels," somebody said.
You watched a police officer lead a boy by the hand through the swirling dust to the rectangles in the bedrock that marked off where the north tower had stood. The cop said something and the boy gazed up into the bright blue sky. You understood the boy must have lost a parent here.
Your friend had also died in the north tower and you stepped with his brother into the rectangles. You gazed up into a nothingness as vast as what had been lost. You felt at the same time the magnitude of what you still held in your heart. You also felt as if you were standing on bedrock in every possible sense.
With your feet planted here, even a newspaper guy could not help but know what was truly important, what was right and what was wrong.
You stepped over to a rectangle and bent down like the firefighter with the rake. You touched the outline with your fingertips and then stood and gazed up again. You decided all those rough and gentle hands that cleared the twin footprints in the bedrock had already built the perfect memorial.
You turned and hugged your dead friend's brother in this northern footprint of irretrievable loss and resounding love. A ship horn blared in the distance and a church bell tolled.
"Life goes on," your friend's brother said.
You walked back up the ramp and life was still going on yesterday, when you returned to the edge of the Pit. The uptown end of the perimeter fence was covered with green trap, as if in allusion to greenery such as graces the tranquil cemetery across the street. You peered through a hole to see stacks of galvanized steel and foam insulation.
The green tarp ended farther downtown and you could see the reconstruction of the PATH train has encroached on the southern footprint. The northern footprint was occupied by a jumble of construction equipment and a large, muddy puddle.
In recent days, a coalition of those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11 got word that what they call "the sacred bedrock" will be covered by structures unrelated to a memorial. The group was talking of a protest at the second anniversary ceremonies.
Patch of tranquility
At the downtown end of the site, you turned back toward Broadway and came to another, larger cemetery, at Trinity Church. You ventured into what must be as valuable a patch of tranquility as there is on Earth. You stopped at a monument to American POWs interred here after dying in British custody during the Revolutionary War. An inscription marks them kin to the thousands who died two blocks away two centuries later:
"Sacred to the memory of those brave and good Men."
Originally published on August 3, 2003 to top
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