Tags
9.11, American Airlines Flight 77, Billy Collins, Healing Field, Irish DIASPORA, Juliana Valentine McCourt, September 11 2001
Severe clear: an aviation term airline pilots use to describe a bright blue sky with seemingly unlimited visibility.
Twenty years ago, my daughter and I first visited The Healing Field, a 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, heartachingly beautiful, each of its 2,996 flags a reminder of a life taken. Wordless, undone by the sheer enormity of the memorial and her diminished stature within it as she walked deep into a field of red, white and blue, I forced myself to look up and away, to recollect the way we had been that September morning when I dropped her off at pre-school, to remember the blueness of the sky.
In that blink of an eye, she is out of sight, deep in the Healing field, where row upon row of flagpoles set five feet apart enable us to stretch out our arms and touch two lives at a time, lest we forget what happened. From somewhere, a mournful “Taps” pierces the air and then Amazing Grace.
Out of sight.
Under that big desert sky, I knew my daughter was not lost. I know the very thought is still what scares me most.
Twenty one years ago, September 11th arrived on a Tuesday, and for a little girl only a few months older than mine, it began with her boarding United Airlines Flight 175. Just four years old, nature-lover Juliana Valentine McCourt, and her mother, an Irish immigrant from Cork, were on their way to Disneyland, the happiest place on earth.
Juliana and her mom were best friends, close as sisters. They were traveling together to California.
Close. Like my daughter and me on our numerous trips from Phoenix to Newark, Newark to Belfast, and back again.
Close. Even when rendered illogical and unreasonable, she by raging adolescent hormones, me by the effects of cancer treatment, I recall we were – and are – as two peas in a pod.
We have the same piano hands. We love Sephora and dark chocolate-covered almonds, mashed potatoes, and the smell of books, Derry Girls and our dogs. We follow each other on Facebook and Instagram, where I have promised not to gush too much in ways that will only embarrass her. We binge-watch Netflix originals – me on Ozark or Yellowstone, she on re-runs of Law and Order, and most recently, Breaking Bad, which she tells me holds up really well after all these years. She’s in Arizona, I’m in Mexico, and we love each other madly, bound forever by the knowledge that we once filled the heart of the man who died when we were far away from him and home one November.
We know anything can happen, but sometimes, like everyone else, we forget.
Juliana and her mother died on the plane that plunged through the South Tower of the World Trade Center with horrifying velocity. In Washington, D.C., sisters, Dana and Zoe Falkenberg, died too when terrorists hijacked their plane and crashed it into the Pentagon. Just 3 and 8, they had boarded American Airlines Flight 77 with their parents and their favorite stuffed animals looking forward to a new life in Australia. Also on their Flight, three exceptional 6th grade students traveling with their teachers to Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary on a special trip awarded by National Geographic. Surveillance footage from Dulles airport would subsequently reveal that little Dana Falkenberg was carrying an Elmo teddy bear – a lasting reminder of the hijackers’ littlest victims.
“Every one of the victims who died on September 11th was the most important person on earth to somebody.”
–President George W. Bush, 12/11/01
All gone.
So many dead, so many names:
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart
Reminders that terrorism is an awful equalizer, colorful tulle butterflies are attached to the flagpoles in the Healing Field. Stuffed bears sit on the grass. For the terrorist, children, parents, grandparents, and those without names or families or homes or good health are all legitimate targets.
Yellow ribbons wrapped around and around those flagpoles encircling the field represent the valor of those “first responders,” those sworn to protect and serve those within. Bright ribbons as blue as that September morning sky are wound around flagpoles in the heart of the Field, for the flight crew members who perished. And, on the grass, for all the veterans who perished that day, pair after pair of combat boots.
Today, from New York to Arizona, and in cities across the globe, wreaths are laid, bells ring out, and names are rubbed in pencil on cherished scraps of paper.
We say their names.
Juliana Valentine McCourt.
She would have graduated from college by now, Disneyland days with her mom perhaps less appealing than thoughts of a new car or a promotion. Such a trajectory is only in my imagination. For Juliana, there was no Disneyland, no first day of school, no soft place to fall.
We will remember her. We will remember them all, as we lower our flags and watch again the footage of the World Trade Center’s final moments on television retrospectives. Keyboard warriors will wax conspiratorial about missing footage of what they think happened at the Pentagon. Politicians will pay their respects after which some of them will resume election campaign trails that are not always respectful. Family members of 9/11 victims will gather on the Memorial plaza in New York to read aloud the names of those killed in the 9/11 attacks and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Others will plan personal observances.
9.11 is history.
My daughter told me that in her final year of high school not one of her teachers remembered 9-11 out loud. Ostensibly, it was no different than the day before, no different than September 10, 2001, when Ruth McCourt was packing for a trip to Disneyland with her daughter, Juliana.
Today, someone will say her name – all the names.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
“The Names” is in dedication to all the victims of September 11 and their survivors.
The Names – Billy Collins
Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name —
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner —
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds —
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
