I had posted this back in April as part of a longer piece about my memories of NYC in the midst of the worst days of the pandemic in the city. In coming back to this section, what was shocking was where the numbers for the current crisis have gone since April, just five months ago. I mentioned 12.000 deaths, we are now closing in on 200,000, with the potential for 400,000 by the end of the year. This is coupled with the apocalyptic fires in the West.
I remembered the country coming together for the city nineteen years ago, but we are in a very different place right now. Will we remember and honor the victims of this pandemic every year as we do the victims of the terror attack, or are the numbers too vast, and the country too divided? I ended the piece back in April on a note of optimism - I hope it is still well founded - Gandhi noted that it may take a while, but love always wins in the end.
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… The city had, of course, been wounded before, on 9/11. That was a shock that took away 2,700 or so lives in a matter of minutes – but this virus has already taken 12,000 lives here and will continue to take more lives for perhaps many more weeks. This is not to downplay the horror of 9/11 – I was there to witness it. I declined an invitation to a breakfast event at the “Windows of the World” restaurant at the top of one of the towers in order to attend a pointless meeting across the street at the Financial Center – a decision that saved my life. I watched as flames and black smoke engulfed the top floors of both towers and as dots in the sky turned out to be desperate people jumping from the building to escape the flames, choosing one death over another.
I watched the buildings sink into themselves, leaving an almost liquid grey mass - like lava boiling as it runs down the side of a volcano. Dust, debris and smoke – the remains of the people and all else lost to the buildings raced through the streets, obliterating all light in its path, darkness where minutes earlier it had been a bright September morning. Terrified people filled the streets trying frantically to outrun the black cloud – a scene not unlike one from a cheap Hollywood horror movie.
I was on a “rescue team”, going back to offices across the street from “Ground Zero” each of the next few days. We walked through the buildings and into the Winter Garden, a showpiece of the office complex. The palm trees that towered above the atrium were still standing, but much of the glass around them was shattered - a dark film covered the outside of the building and some of the walls inside. Across the street, the remains of the two towers were still smoking, a few shards of the metal that covered the buildings still standing upright as a further reminder of what was there just days earlier.
The city was said to have come together in that disaster – a mayor attending to first responders and funerals; the President standing in front of the harbor with a bullhorn making a valiant speech – unfortunately, a prelude to another disaster. The country and the world expressed its sorrow for the city as a quietness settled over it – photographs of the faces of the missing appeared on the walls of buildings; pictures of lost police and fireman were posted at their precincts and firehouses.
I gave a speech at a long-planned event a few blocks from the site a few weeks later – an acrid odor, almost visible still hung over the downtown neighborhoods. The other speakers and I acknowledged the disaster, and then moved on to prepared remarks that seemed stale beside the scope of the recent event.
Through it all however, we were allowed to mourn together, to find comfort in crowds. The auditorium that I spoke in was full – people were back at work, disseminating the disaster together; there was a black hole downtown but the rest of the city, while wounded, was coming back to life.
This disaster is of course different in orders of magnitude – deaths in the tens of thousands in this country. We mourn alone, in the isolation of our quarantine – so many feel the personal loss of loved ones or friends, but as the numbers continue to rise, the individual deaths become abstract, difficult to grasp, the magnitude almost unimaginable, perceived through news reports delivered by commentators in their own homes, sitting in front of bookcases in their studies, kitchen appliances or even their beds. We grieve for New York, but in such a sad, disconnected way. I have been more a voyeur than a witness to this current disaster, safe here in rural Connecticut, but wondering what the world will look like when we come out of it. For solace, I have been listening to Elvis Costello’s “The Birds Will Still be Singing”. They will.