I still went to work that day.
My weekday job was as an executive assistant at a technology start-up in Chinatown. Broadway and Canal Street. Work didn’t start till 10am for me, so most of the time I didn’t even get up till 8am. And that day, it was the same.
I got up, showered, and was blowdrying my hair in my Brooklyn bedroom, watching The Today Show.
The news cast was interrupted from it’s planned rundown for Katie Couric to tell us about the breaking news of a plane having flown into the north tower of the WTC.
I called out of my bedroom to my roommate Eric, a photo assistant at a food magazine.
“A plane just flew into on of the World Trade towers,” I said.
He had just woken up. He wanted to go onto the roof of our walkup to look across the river and down. We guessed it had been a small private plane.
I went with him, and grabbed my cell phone.
He stood on the roof and I stayed on the ladder, peeking my head out of the hatch opening. I called my boyfriend who worked at Goldman Sachs, in a high rise near the tower.
I got his voicemail.
He had been leaving me a message the same time.
“Hey Heathe. I was just in the bathroom fixing my contacts and plane flew into the World Trade Center. It’s crazy. I love you. Call you later.”
Eric and I stayed at the roof staring. Other neighbors on other buildings were on their roofs. People were in the street outside talking up at the people on the roofs.
It was a beautiful clear sky, with the exception of the smoke billowing out of the tower.
Then we heard a loud screech across the sky in the distance. And saw a dark shadow quickly come up and slam into the other tower.
“Was that an accident?” I asked Eric.
We knew that had been a large plane.
I went downstairs, and didn’t realize I had a second message on my phone. It was my boyfriend again.
“Hey Heathe, we’re evacuating our building. I’ll keep you posted on when we’re back in the building. I love you.”
They were planning to go back to work once they knew it was safe. And he didn’t have a mobile phone.
The news was talking about this being a potential terrorist attack. The video of the second plane flying into the building kept playing. There was more color to the images on the screen than what I had witnessed.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel threatened for my personal safety.
And I knew my asshole of a boss at the time would be upset if I didn’t come in to the office.
So I finished getting ready and walked to the subway. Other people were still going to work too.
The subway wasn’t usually that crowded when I went to work normally, because I had the luxury of being an hour behind rush hour. But it was less busy than usual. Everyone had a look on their face that indicated they knew of the chaos above ground.
I switched trains at Union Square and headed downtown on the 6.
It took me just a few blocks shy of my usual stop and then said everyone had to get off the train.
I came out and started walking down Broadway. People were walking up Broadway, in the opposite direction of me. Mostly people were standing in the streets looking towards downtown.
It was an eery calmness in sound.
While I couldn’t normally see the towers from where I was, I could see the smoke in the sky.
When I got to my building, I came into the office to a few people who had already been there throughout the chaos.
“One of the towers just collapsed,” they said.
“Wait, what?” I asked. It was just after 10am.
I imagined the tower falling over and crashing into other buildings. Crushing people.
They didn’t have any answers as to how and what the impact was. One of the older guys in the office had a son who was down there working and had called while walking on the street.
I hopped on my email to check in with my friends. A thread had already been going.
“Swede works in the North tower. One hundredth floor.”
That was one of the notes from one of our friends.
Another had noted that he had been absent from the previous weekend’s activities, two days earlier. Because he had been in Sweden visiting his family.
“He came back yesterday. So he may have already gone to work before all of this happened,” was the message.
I knew Swede as the other anally punctual person in the group. Besides me.
One of our friends had tried to reach him a few ways. No response yet. But he wouldn’t likely be able to respond if he was in transit to work. I didn’t think he had a mobile.
My mom called me to check on me. I let her know where I was and that I was okay. I didn’t tell her I had seen things start to unfold at home and had chosen to go into work. I made it seem like I had been there all along. I told her I didn’t know where my boyfriend was. She was sure he was okay.
My boss came into the office.
“I lost my bike!”
He had been downtown at the scene taking pictures. And had seen the tower collapse. The building had crumbled, and not tipped over as I had imagined. It had been the south tower that collapsed. The second one hit.
“The other tower just collapsed,” someone called out. They had gotten a call from someone.
I had a calmness in me, as I wondered about my friend Swede and my boyfriend. What had the collapse been like? Where did the debris go? Did it crush people who were on the street?
“You should all just go home. No work is getting done here today,” the boss said.
I grabbed my things, and walked out without saying goodbye to anyone.
I walked.
All the way to 46th and 2nd Avenue. To my boyfriend’s apartment, for which I had a key.
I went inside, turned on the TV. I called my family and let them know where I was.
I waited. For hours. Watching TV. It wasn’t until just after 2pm that my boyfriend came through the door with a co-worker who I had met. They had dust on them. Not caked on. But lots of dust.
I didn’t hug my boyfriend when he walked in because I didn’t want to be hysterical in front of his friend. I gave them their space to get cleaned up and have a glass of water in the small studio space we were in.
His friend lived nearby and was going to continue on to his place. When he was gone, I hugged my boyfriend. No tears.
He talked about how they had been down by water when both towers fell. Some people had jumped in the water because they were worried they would be hit with more than dust. I let him call his parents while I went out to see if I could find us some food.
It felt weird to assume that part of the NYC world hadn’t stopped as a result of this. But we needed food. I found a pizza place that was open and grabbed a few slices. Brought them back and ate with him.
We watched the news. I told him how I had gone into work after the second plane hit. He didn’t seem surprised by that. I told him my friends and I were worried about Swede.
By the time evening started to roll around, I was anxious to get to my place in Brooklyn.
“You should stay here,” he said.
But I hadn’t brought anything with me. And I was going to try to go to work the next day. He wanted me to take a cab. But I was sure cars wouldn’t be allowed across the bridge. And we knew the subways were partially running.
“If I can’t get across, I’ll come back. Obviously.”
I went home. And spent most of the night watching the news from my couch in the dark. Not eating or drinking anything. My roommate having decided to stay with friends in light of everything going on.
I had been checking my email with my friends, logging on through AOL dial-up.
No one had heard from Swede.
He had come back from Sweden. And his roommates said he had gone into work early from being away a few days.
He was in the building when it was hit.
As the weeks rolled by, we said our formal goodbyes to Swede, and we got more information about how the buildings were hit and why.
The first plane was estimated to have hit the north tower, where Swede worked on the 100th floor at Marsh McClennan, between the 93rd and 99th floors.
I prayed it had been an instant death for him, and not a dragged out waiting in hope for saving.
I was telling someone about how I process things in life. It’s usually delayed. Years later. Never in the moment. Some people have trauma or an event happen that has an echo that stays with them for some time.
For me, it’s not like that. Something happens, good or bad. I recognize it in the moment. But I don’t fully know what to do with the information or feelings. How to truly express them. Not for years.
In this case, 20 years.
“I’m only just now processing 9/11,” I said to someone.
And by “processing” I mean… The sadness of the loss and the experiences in those moments are really just now something I am allowing myself to feel.
The kind life I knew that was taken too soon. The absence of who he was supposed to evolve to feels more tangible now.
The last time I saw Swede was a few weeks before 9/11. In August. I was in Times Square at a public relations event with my boss. It was at one of the Marriott hotels in the area. And Swede was in the lobby of the building with his brother, who had come from Sweden to visit.
I often ran into Swede at random places on the street in the city.
He was a wanderer.
And one of the kindest energies to know in that city.
That kind energy… That piece he held space for us with… That has been missed.
But I am hopeful that now that I have identified what went away when he did, I can pick it up and hold space for it for others.
Since his passing, I have picked up other lessons from him. It takes time for them to unfold. Time for them to be processed.
At least for me.
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