Dear all,
Now that 9/11 is amongst us, I want to share this email that I sent to a nun friend on October 11th of
2001, a month after 9/11 happened to this city and to our country. My friend wanted me to write my story of this tragic event, and tell how it had affected me, especially as a New Yorker. As I read it over today, I felt the same emotional sadness as I did then. I guess the story will always remain in my subconscious as a day of inconsolable grief.
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Dear Carm,
Today is the one-month anniversary of the WTC tragedy and I feel like writing to someone that I know will listen with her heart and soul as I expose my thoughts and feelings about that memorable day that is still deeply engraved in me.
I picked you because you are my friend and because I had promised to share with you my experience of this most painful event and couldn't bring myself to do it until now.
September 11 started out as a beautiful sunny day. The temperature was spring like and I left my apartment in the morning to first vote for the next mayor of New York City, and proceed from there to work. I left the voting place around 8:35 A.M., and, I think it was when I was in the bus going to my work from the polling place that the first plane hit the first tower.
I didn't hear anything as I was in the bus. When I got off the bus I thought I would stop and buy a hot dog for breakfast from Steve, a Hungarian outdoor vendor who has become my morning-breakfast buddy, and who sells his delicious junk food right in front of Bellevue Hospital where I work.
As I approached him I saw that he wasn't his usual cheery self, and, plus, he had the radio on very loud. When he saw me he exclaimed, "Teacher (that's what he calls me) have you heard? The Twin Towers were just hit by two planes! The second plane hit just a few seconds ago!" I asked Steve if they were little planes, and when he told me that they were big commercial airliners I ran into the hospital.
When I got inside it was pandemonium. The loudspeakers were screaming that all surgical doctors, surgical residents and nurses report to the E.R. immediately. As I was walking towards the elevators I saw doctors and residents running down the hall towards the ER. Some looked like they were in panic, especially the young residents.
When I got to my classroom on the 8th floor I immediately turned on the TV and saw the footage of the planes hitting the towers. The announcer, Bryant Gumble I think, was saying that the victims would be taken to St. Vincents and Bellevue Hospital. Then a hospital teacher friend phoned me in panic to ask me what was happening (She didn't know it then, but her best friend would soon die in one of the towers)
I hung up the phone with my friend and then I heard sirens. I looked out the window and saw ambulance after ambulance rushing toward the emergency room of Bellevue.
I knew that I couldn't stay in my classroom. I was too stunned, too shocked. I ran out to the street, but before I got out of the hospital I heard the sobs and screams of people coming from the emergency room.
After I got out of the hospital, I walked about 4 blocks South and could see that the police had already stopped car and bus traffic and people were walking on the streets and sidewalks. About the third block from the hospital I could see one of the towers burning. I kept walking on the street that was filled with a blanket of people that extended for blocks and blocks.
I remember looking down for an instance when, all of a sudden, I heard a thundering roar from the crowd crying out something like, "NOOOOOOOO!!! I looked up and, couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the first tower come crumbling down.
I just stood there in shock and imagined the thousands of people who were losing their lives in such a horrible way at that very moment! The tower took just a few seconds to fall, and all that was left was a mushroom cloud of smoke.
After that there was an eerie silence that seemed to last for many seconds, and then I heard the sobs and silent crying. Some people were kneeling down holding their heads; others were just standing there looking straight ahead with tears running down their cheeks, others just looked stunned.
Many were hugging others. I saw young men, old men, young women and old women crying or sobbing without regard as to who was looking at them. I wondered how many had friends or relatives working in the towers.
I started walking towards my apartment when I heard two men saying that the second tower had just fallen. I couldn't believe it. How could such a massive, magnificent, kingly structure, as was the World Trade Center, crumble like that? This couldn't be happening!!!
Since my apartment is only three blocks from St. Vincent's Hospital that is the nearest to the WTC, I decided to stop to see if I could help in anyway. As I approached the hospital, I could hear the sirens screeching to a halt in front of it.
When I got to the front, it was cordoned off and guarded by one policeman, but I could see the sidewalk filled with gurneys ready to take the injured out of the ambulances into the hospital. There were many doctors and nurses in scrubs waiting for the ambulances.
The first ambulance that I saw jolted me. Out came a man or a woman so badly burned that you could not tell what gender the person was. The blackened arms of this person were up in the air. I could just imagine the excruciating pain that this precious, innocent human being must be going through.
I had to stop to wipe my eyes and nose with my blouse because I was crying so much and I didn't have any tissues. Even now as I write this I'm crying at the memory of it all.
I stood there looking as ambulance after ambulance came in, when suddenly, I saw a crowd of people approaching the hospital from the south - WTC area - covered in white dust from head to toe. Some were carrying briefcases. A few looked like their hair was encrusted with dust and blood.
When the hospital personnel saw them coming, they were gently escorted into the hospital, especially those that looked bloodied and those who seemed to be in shock. They were the people from the WTC, that had escaped from the towers and nearby Wall Street, who were not injured enough to be coming in ambulances.
I went home and phoned my mom so that she could call the rest of my family to tell them that I was OK. I was so happy when the school Chancellor announced, via the media, that there would be no school the next day 9/12.
On that day I slept late and, around noontime, I went out for a walk towards St. Vincent hospital. It broke my heart to see, what I perceived as hundreds of people, carrying pictures of their loved ones coming out of St Vincent's hospital in tears or with grief written on their faces.
One young woman came to me and gave me a picture of her sister. In tears she asked me to please post it somewhere on my block where everybody could see it.
I saw the youthful, very pretty smiling face in the picture holding a puppy. The flyer indicated that she worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and read, "Please, please if you see this person call the following numbers..."
I later learned that, out of one thousand employees of Cantor Fitzgerald working in one of the towers, seven hundred lost their lives. One of the planes hit a few floors below them. I read that it was people from that company who were jumping out the windows to escape the smoke and flames.
I walked in a daze all that day looking at people and praying for the grief stricken. The next day, the 13th, I went to work and when I got there, in the morning, I saw all the television networks in front of the hospital interviewing people who were holding pictures of their loved ones. The anguish on their faces was heart breaking!
Hundreds of pictures had been posted on the fence in front of the hospital. It is now a memorial.
I taught all that day with a heavy heart. Thank god that the children were not that affected. They thought that what they were seeing on TV was a movie. I had a lump in my throat all day trying to control myself from crying, and stayed to myself not wanting to talk to anybody.
I left the hospital at the school's closing time, 3 PM, and when I got outside I stopped to listen to the grieving friends and relatives of the missing, and to look at what seemed like hundreds of new pictures posted on the fence. That is when I broke down.
At first it was just tears running down my cheeks as I left Bellevue to walk the four blocks to catch my bus home, but as I got to the second block something happened that shocked me. I knew I would have to walk all the way home because, suddenly, I started sobbing and couldn't stop. I didn't want to get on the bus in this condition. I put on my dark glasses so that people would not see me.
I tried to stop but I couldn't control my body. My chest was heaving heavily from the strength of my loud sobs. I prayed to god to help me stop. I didn't know what was happening to me. Thank god that I found a street that was basically empty and walked it until I stopped by a tree.
I held on tight to one of its branches because I was beginning to feel weak and nauseous from my sobs. The crying slowly subsided. I think the spiritual energy of the tree helped.
I sat down on a stoop of stairs in front of an apartment building to get my strength back, and walked home after about half an hour of sitting there and composing myself by taking deep breaths - something I learned in yoga classes many years ago.
The next day, Friday, I woke up with a very bad headache and called in sick. I stayed home and slept all day. My whole body ached from crying so much and I just wanted the calmness and relief of sleep.
That night my roommate and I went to a candle and prayer vigil at Union Square Park that is near our apartment.
We were so moved by what we saw on the streets as we walked towards the park. Outside one restaurant were waiters and chefs standing in a straight line in their immaculate white aprons. They were standing ramrod straight, each one holding a candle.
Newspapers, radio and television media had asked people to come out of their homes and places of work, at 6PM on that day, in groups, and hold lit candles to commemorate the missing of the WTC. We encountered many groups doing this along the way. It was so moving to see that.
When we got to the park I was surprised to see young people with purple-colored hair holding American flags. A man asked one girl with tattoos on her arms and purple hair why she was holding the American flag, and she said that it was not so much patriotism, but unity in sorrow with the people of the United States. I found that so touching.
So many people, young and old were holding a flag in one hand and a candle in another. I couldn't believe it when I found myself singing songs such as, God Bless America and the Stars Spangled Banner with hundreds of people, young and old.
Me, a peace child of the 60's singing the national anthem! I saw middle-aged people holding hands with purple-haired youngsters singing the patriotic songs. There is such irony and beauty in life!
It is hard to walk in my neighborhood and not see the Twin Towers. I miss them so much! It’s like having a giant tree, that one loved since one's youth, suddenly be chopped down for no reason at all.
Five people, who worked at the WTC, died in my neighborhood. Some of the neighbors are taking care of their cats and dogs until a family member can claim them.
Our neighborhood has bonded. People used to pass each other with blank looks and rarely said hello. No more. If those terrorists wanted to kill our city, what they did instead is unite New Yorkers like never before.
Bellevue Hospital still has some of the WTC injured, and from my classroom window I can see below, on what used to be a hospital parking lot for cars, about fourteen refrigerator cars containing the body parts of the WTC fallen.
You can see doctors and technicians in scrubs and masks coming out of them. They are doing DNA tests to see if they can identify the precious remains of the WTC fallen.
When they do, they put them in small wooden coffins that they deliver to the medical examiners office, who then notifies the family that the remains of their loved one has been located. They can do this because the family has already registered and taken hair or other body samples of their loved ones to the medical examiners office that is located a block from Bellevue Hospital.
When my students ask me what those trucks are doing down below, I tell them that they contain refrigerated food to feed all the volunteers who are working in Ground Zero. They are so innocent and don't even think to ask me how come the trucks aren't located at Ground Zero.
About a week ago I went to Ground Zero after the city started permitting people to go there. When I got out of the subway station on Fulton Street and walked the three blocks that would give me the view of Ground Zero, I gasped.
Absolutely unbelievable!! People were slowly walking seeing the site next to a cordon of police and National Guard personnel.
Some people who were there, like I was, to see Ground Zero for the first time, had tears rolling down their cheeks.
I just stood there for a short while and stared at the massive mountains of steel until a guardsman gently urged me to move on.
I thought of the missing that were still buried there whose loved ones were still frantically looking for them hoping, against hope, that a miracle would occur and they would be found alive.
All the people that were there moved in respectful silence. I felt like I was walking on sacred ground.
When I passed St. Paul's church and saw that it was absolutely intact with just some burn marks on its steeple, I inwardly cheered and mentally blessed it.
That was the church that George Washington and his wife Martha used to attend, and Mayor Guilliani told the world on TV that it miraculously did not fall when churches, a few blocks away, were completely destroyed. St. Pauls stands a half block from the WTC.
We still smell the smoke on my block coming from the WTC and, every once in a while, the smell of the dead comes through heavily.
Strange, but when I went to Ground Zero I didn't smell the dead, but now I do on some days in my neighborhood. Last night the odor was especially strong.
Instead of complaining, I ask god to bless the souls of those who died, and to help those who are grieving them find spiritual relief and comfort.
During the first two weeks after the catastrophe, we would have to walk in our neighborhood holding our noses with handkerchiefs or wear masks because the dust and smoke coming from the WTC was so overwhelming.
When the dust and smoke coming out of Ground Zero was analyzed it was found to contain PCP's, asbestos and human bone remains that had pulverized.
To me, the thought that we were breathing into our lungs the remains of human beings who died on 9/11 just took my breath away.
I remembered, after reading about the human remains in the newspapers, that, on the second day of the incident, my roommate and I had stopped to scoop the dust off the back of a police car that had just come back from Ground Zero. We put it in a little plastic bag that I carried in my purse and took it home.
After we found out that the dust contained human remains, we placed it in front of the altar of Our Lady of Guadalupe that is in the living room. I ask our lady to bless the souls, whose remains are in the bag, every morning before I go to work.
I find it strange that I do not feel hatred toward the terrorists who did this to so many innocent people. I don't pray for them either.
I do think that I need to spiritually and psychologically examine my feelings towards those who performed such a cruel deed, and proceed gently from there.
One thing I do know is that the death of all those precious brothers and sisters who perished on 9/11, will forever affect my life. I will never be the same again. I can't ever be bothered or worried again about mundane worldly things like I did before 9/ll happened.
One world leader that gave me much comfort was Tony Blair in the speech that he gave to Parliament about a week ago, and another is President Bush who came to the ruins of the WTC shortly after 9/11 and, with his arm around a fireman, told us and the world that the people who did this to us will soon hear from us.
Carm, writing this to you has been like a soul catharsis for me. I had been wanting to write my experience of this event, for myself only, so that I would not forget the details that affected me so deeply, but then I thought, that what this experience has taught me is that, if I want to spiritually learn and grow from it, I must share it with others. Thanks for letting me share it with you.
Love,
Betina
