There’s so much of our trip away I want to write about but this one feels like a burning need as we come to the close of the year.
During our trip to New York one of the places I really wanted to go to was Ground Zero. I don’t know why it felt important, there are so many burning images of that day. The iron cross from the girders of the building, the loss, the sadness….
As we wandered around the site it was little more than any other building site if you hadn’t known what was once there. I don’t know if I was disapointed or relieved. As we walked round it’s perimeter we came across the WTC Tribute Visitor Centre, just as a tour was leaving led by family members and survivors
We were taken round the site by Michael (a retired fire Lt. who was there helping on the day), and Rosemary (whose son George was a fire-fighter killed on the day) were our guides. Their stories, the pain, so poignant as they recounted that day and the months that followed.
Rosemary sparkled as she spoke about her son George and his love of life, how they didn’t find him until New Years Day. I asked her in a quiet moment as we walked around how she felt people coming, paying money to go on these tours. I guess I was questioning my own reasons for being there.
She smiled at me and said “It’s a tribute you came here. It’s a tribute you remember. Go home tell people to come, hear our story, tell them not to forget.” She handed me and others a picture of George and ask that we light a candle for him. “He liked adventure” she said with a twinkle.
As we returned to the centre to see the the exhibition, it felt so much more real than it did as I stood there just 2hrs earlier. I looked across the the faces staring at me from the wall, I wanted each of them to know they were remembered. I thought of so many tragedies that happen around the world every day. The names, the faces, this was just one of many.As this year comes to an end something Michael said resounds. He spoke of the guilt he carried for years of the days and weeks he worked on the World Trade Centre Site. How one day he was pulled into the triage area, and was given a massage to help alleviate the stress. He said he shrugged the woman off full of guilt that someone was doing something for him, when there was so many other things to do.
He said after finally being able to talk about he reasises that that woman who gave him that massage was giving what she could He said “Be involved. Do something for your community. Its the small things that may seem insignificant to you, that may mean the most important to others”