| A 911 Diary: Day Five In Memoriam...and Renewal |
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9/15 p.m.: hitting the wall: i don't know if writing will help, or make it worse. i've just walked in the door---i left an hour early. i feel like i've let them down, but i just couldn't anymore. i have been working mostly these last days at ground zero, what we've come to call 'the pile', talking with rescue workers and helping them express and process their feelings about the tasks they were so devoted to. of course, each day, from the early time at chelsea pier to the later times at the family compassion center at the armory, i would be available to family members who needed to talk, but mostly they wanted to keep moving, from hospital to hospital, back and forth, posting flyers with their loved ones' pictures, seeking out reporters, hoping for word. so i'd carved a comfortable niche for myself being there with the rescue workers instead. today, i was told to go to the armory. and there i met a different scene--families beginning to give up hope. needing to talk, not about their grief yet, but about their loved ones, why it would be such an unspeakable loss if they were gone, what they were like, why they were just too good, too important, to die. i've been there myself, years ago, and i knew exactly what they meant, and a lot of old pain welled up. then came the little children, brought by family because the team needs dna samples to help identify bodies and the best sources of similar dna are the children of the dead, or the parents. i'm sure it was exhaustion--i've been there every day every moment i could, running on adrenaline and hope that both reached a very low level today--but the kids did it for me. the ones telling us they were "getting swabbed" (cheek swabs for cells for dna) so that daddy or mommy could come home. so i say i need to go back to ground zero, to the easier task of supporting the exhausted and discouraged rescue workers, and the supervisor tells me no, that today has been the worst. the biggest, heaviest pieces of debris are moved now, and now the body parts are being recovered at an increasing rate, and a worker came in reporting seeing them carry past a body bag---with a firefighter's helmet perched respectfully on top. suddenly i couldn't stop the tears though heaven knows i tried, and they said "go home." and, i'm so sorry, but i did. |
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