Laid out on the work bench, profile after profile, with names noted on each, it was hard to walk by and not say a prayer for each, wonder about each life lost.
We all watched, listened, and watched again. Horrified, unbelieving. So removed in bucolic Vermont, home of Ben & Jerry’s, apple orchards, farmers' markets and small town spirit. Some, of course, had personal immediate connections. It was an event with broad ripples. I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t know anyone personally, no New York City connections, no Washington D.C. connections, no one on board a plane that day. The only common denominator was being a U.S. citizen, a human being, aghast that other humans could think of this, do this. It did hit home, though, three years later. I worked for a company with a water-jet and we cut profiles of all the victims from Staten Island out of white granite. Each profile now faces across the water from two graceful granite wing structures as part of the Staten Island 9/11 memorial. Laid out on the work bench, profile after profile, with names noted on each, it was hard to walk by and not say a prayer for each, wonder about each life lost. I didn’t know any of them in real time, but here, so far removed, years after the fact they meant something to me. Tangible evidence of lives cut short. Ordinary people who woke up, got dressed for work and were simply going about their day, just as I was three years later. Those images are cut into my memory as cleanly and precisely as the water-jet did that granite.
Penelope Bliss
