Every year, it seems to pass with less and less attention. Of course, families of the 2,749 victims will never forget. But for the rest of us, the horror and heroism of that day is slowly escaping from our collective consciousness.
Last year, I was in New York City for a journalism conference on the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks. I spent the morning in lower Manhattan as names were read and bells were tolled.
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Early on Saturday morning, around 2 a.m., I'm standing at ground zero, at the tail end of a trip to New York. In a city that doesn't sleep, Church Street is eerily quiet. The next day, thousands of New Yorkers will gather here for a memorial service. But right now, the nearest pedestrians are several blocks away.
An immense, gratuitous void still slices through the sky. The black space above the WTC side is painfully bare. I clasp the tall metal fence and tilt my head skyward, and the only building I see is the World Financial Center, four blocks away.
Several handmade signs are attached to the fence -- in violation of Port Authority regulations, I might add, but the metal barrier would feel so empty and cold without them.
Some of the signs include photos of the dead. "Miss you more each year," a yellow and red poster cries.
Other posters recall the life of loved ones. "Worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center," one says. "His body and his soul is out there. It needs recovery into the gates of Heaven -- please bless this picture." Think about that -- his body was never found amid the rubble.
Twelve votive candles are glowing on a fence railing. One of the candles is missing an orange flame. (Draw your own metaphor.) A few feet away, another small candle burns below a photograph of firefighter Kevin O'Reilly. Yellow, pink, red, and white flowers add color to the scene.
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Six months to the day before the skyline was scarred, I stood on the observation deck at the top of the South Tower and enjoyed a 360-degree view of New York. Standing there created a certain sense of invincibility -- of towering a quarter mile above city dwellers.
I doubt the jumpers of Sept. 11 felt invincible. I hope they didn't feel anything.
New York Fire Department battalion chief Richard Picciotto expressed a similar sentiment at a speech on Thursday evening in the University Union Chesapeake Rooms. He was trapped in a sixth floor stairwell of the South Tower when it pancaked and vanished. His life flashed before his eyes -- and then he had a last wish.
"I wanted it to be fast," he recalled. "I didn't want to suffer."
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Back along the fence, a foundation is visible inside the pit. Floodlights illuminate temporary buildings, and the PATH train tunnels to New Jersey. It's beginning to look less like a grave. Along Liberty Street, emotions pour out of a homemade memorial. A postcard of the pre-Sept. 11 skyline includes a message from a Norwegian tourist. "Miss you," it says, with the Twin Towers circled in black magic marker. Nearby, an unknown mourner has scratched a message into a barrier:
Yo New York-
I hope you are feeling better
I see that nasty scar is starting
To heal-a-little.
I will always pray for your losses
Stay strong. You are still the
greatest city in the world.
I love you.
"WTC 9/11: Never forget," a black and white sign implores. Or demands. Or begs. With each passing year, the memories fade and forgetting becomes easier. But forgetting also becomes more hazardous -- because if those 2,749 Americans taught us anything, they taught us to remember.
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