A beautiful editorial in today's New York Times:
The Call
Of all the heart-rending stories that emerged from Tuesday's disaster, what resonates most, somehow, is the thought of those phone calls that went out in the all-too-brief gap between the first airliner's crash into the World Trade Center and the towers' final collapse.
People trapped in hijacked airplanes or burning buildings picked up their cell phones, or swiped a credit card through the phone on the back of a seat, and made a final call. Facing sudden death, they were given the chance to say a few last words to a loved one. Almost invariably, they chose things that they probably said every day — I love you. Take care of the children. Take care of yourself. The sentiments surely sounded inadequate as they were spoken, if only because they would have to stand in for a lifetime of words that could no longer be said.
In almost every human tragedy, there is an ungraspable gap between the ordinary, everyday objects that somehow become absorbed in it and the gravity of the event itself. Cell phones have become such routine, indispensable irritants in ordinary life that we forget the ways they have reinvented the act of conversation. Because of the informality that often arises from the frequency with which we use them, we tend to talk on them with friends and family almost as if we were together in person, saying nothing much, perhaps, in the unexpressed knowledge that the joy of talking together regularly doesn't require saying much. All that matters sometimes — and for some people Tuesday was one of those times — is the sound of a welcome voice.
Since cell-phone technology first came into common use in the past few years, there have been instances where someone trapped, nearing death, was able to call home and say goodbye. But there has been no instance like that on Tuesday, when so many doomed people called the most meaningful number they knew from wherever they happened to be and prayed that someone would pick up on the other end. Some were disappointed, and left messages on answering machines.
Nearly all the conversations that took place as the disaster unfolded would have been unmemorable if it weren't clear that the person on one end of the line was facing death. That phrase, "facing death," is a very old one, so familiar that we have forgotten how literal its meaning can be. Most of us face away from dying. That is part of what being alive means. But on Tuesday morning, an uncounted number of humans knowingly turned their faces toward death — even if they only meant to escape down the stairwell — and as they did so pressed the talk button on their cell phones. What haunts us in the aftermath is the silence at those numbers that have now gone out of service. |
