In Memoriam, I guess

1. Oklahoma
The picture on the front page that morning. There’s always a picture but today you don’t quite understand it. A building sort of, but like it was made out of putty and broken, roof sliding down into a gaping hole, rods sticking out like crazed coathangers in the messiest biggest closet ever.


2. Rabin
Not his death, but his funeral. Walking past the TV in the living room - back before mom and dad rearranged, back when it was still in that corner by the stairs. Someone left it on. Or maybe someone’s sitting there on the sofa, watching. Dad, maybe. You walk by and stop, suddenly, because you’re eight and it’s the first time you’ve seen something like this. You’ve been to a funeral, two maybe, one Jewish, but never a world leader. You grew up hearing every Sunday morning and Tuesday afternoon about Yitzhak Rabin, the peacemaker, Israeli hope. In your desk in those too-well air-conditioned classrooms, you worked half-heartedly through Hebrew primers and memorized traditions and learned about Jewish people. Perlman, the Marx brothers, Chagall, Rabin. Rabin stuck with you because Rabin did something. Rabin touched people and Rabin mattered.
You stare at the TV and now, ten, eleven years later you remember the casket, invisible, under the taught blue-and-white. A star in the center, somehow like a target. And you remember the men in green berets, security or an honor guard or something.
They all looked alike, really. Jews and Arabs. They were all tanned and all sad. You wondered if they were scared and you wondered if they went to the other funerals, the ones they told you all about on those Tuesday afternoons.

3. New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania
You’re a sophomore and it’s cool just because you’re not a freshman. It’s third-period US I, and Mr. Fields is talking about something which no longer matters, today. Then the beep of the PA, an apology for the interruption, and it begins. You’re sitting in the back, chair tilted up against the window, with that big support beam or pipe or whatever it is on your left. The principal talks, puts the radio up to the PA, and eventually leaves you to your thoughts. The class is blank still.
“How the hell do you follow that up?” Mr. Fields says. It’s not really a question. The sky above is blue like crystal and a lawnmower buzzes far away, way down the hill, maybe on the soccer practice field. You think of your dad and are glad he’s not working in Philly still, and think of your sister who’s out on an Air Force base in Colorado.
That afternoon you get home and the news is on, playing the same footage over and over, mostly New York. The towers - you were that, not that long ago - and the smoke. Black on blue. Then more smoke, dust, debris, and you know that the people up there can’t see anything. Nothing’s on but the news, so you go outside and shoot hoops, yourself. Nothing but the news on the radio. It’s stifling.

4. Columbia
Mom’s at a PTA convention for the weekend and Dad’s out, somewhere, by the time you get up. You get some toast and a cup of juice and sit down in front of the TV, on the futon, and every channel has the same thing: Bright blue sky with brighter white smoke. Red, yellow, warning colored banners at the bottom. Columbia and NASA. You sit and stare, because there’s nothing else you can do but sit and stare.

5. London
It gets you out of bed, when your alarm - tuned to NPR - comes to life with a British voice, not American. BBC special report. It takes a minute or two to sink in, because you were just asleep, but you hear bomb and bus and don’t know what to think. So you shower, and it washes away some of the confusion. It doesn’t hit you until you open your laptop and check the website. There’s something that once was a bus but isn’t, not anymore.
The numbers get higher. 2, then 5, then 10. You go to class and three hours later they’re saying 37. You listen to the radio in the car and then start scanning for music, because you’ve heard this all before.
It still feels fake.