Remembering

Five or six years ago, my friend Perdita posted a question on Facebook: what’s something you’ve done that no one else has ever done? There was only one thing I could think of, so I wrote back: I sang one of my songs at the bottom of the World Trade Center pit. I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth trying to describe it again.

            It was the middle of July, 2002. Ten months had passed since the shock and devastation of September 11^th, and just like JFK’s assassination, those of us who were alive when the planes hit remember where we were at that moment, and the visceral memory of how it felt. I was with Peter, my ex-husband, waiting in a small room with a TV at Albany Medical Hospital in upstate New York. Our son Forrest was recovering in the next room from his very last medical treatment for the cancer that would finally take him. He had turned three the week before, and because of his age, he’d been fully sedated to receive radiation so he wouldn’t squirm while they zapped him. The three of us had gone through this same exhausting ritual everyday for five weeks straight. We were counting down to September 11^th. It was supposed to be a good day. A day to celebrate. The end of chemo, radiation, blood draws, surgeries, test after test, and scary weekly check-ups. Peter and I were waiting in the tiny room watching the overly-cheery morning news when the show was interrupted. Like so many of us, we thought the first plane was a terrible accident. By the time the second plane hit, Forrest was sitting on my lap, and we knew it was terrorism. A stunning quiet and a fear-filled energy filled the radiation lab, and then went with us through the hospital as we wandered around, tried to figure out what to do next. We were 150 miles north of Manhattan. Surely helicopters with victims would be landing on the hospital’s roof soon. It took us a couple of hours before we had the confidence to drive home.

            Shortly after Forrest died six months later, my phone rang. A man I didn’t know was on the other end. He’d heard my music at a concert in Pennsylvania the year before and asked if he could use some it in a documentary he was producing about the healing power of music. When I told him it was a kind of miracle that he’d called because Forrest had just died and I was hurting myself, he went quiet. Like pretty much everyone, he didn’t know what to say. He finally told me that his calling felt exactly right and that he hoped I felt that way too. What I didn’t have the clarity to say in that moment was that his call felt like a life raft coming to rescue me.

            That phone call led to a concert produced by Lisa Luckett whose husband Ted had been killed in the North Tower (the first tower to be hit). She needed to meet and acknowledge the men and women who had spent nine months trying unsuccessfully to find her husband. Phoebe Snow, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Delores Holmes, and I were asked to do the concert, in each case because we had ourselves experienced a big loss. This was Lisa’s chance to say thank you, and to help first-responders begin the process of healing themselves.

            We were all invited to go down into the pit at Ground Zero a week before the concert. Port Authority personnel led by Bill Keegan, thought it was important for us to know what it felt like down there before we sang for all of the people who’d worked down there day after day. We met Bill and half a dozen colleagues at the gate on Fulton Street, got into Port Authority SUVs and descended slowly into the pit. The sun was starting to go down. There were shadows from the buildings above us. The thing I remember most was the quiet. So very quiet despite the city rumbling above us. When our vehicles finally stopped, Bill told us to wander around, get a feel for the place. The hole was so much bigger than I would have imagined. The culverts that had carried subway cars were like giant screaming mouths in the side walls. Rusted and profoundly empty. There was a fine gray powder on the solid earth below my feet: pulverized phones, computers, desks, elevators, beams, everything that had been inside those buildings. What I felt more than anything was that I was on sacred ground. I’m having trouble coming up with words right now. It’s just that it was powerful in a way there aren’t words for. What could I possibly relate it to?

            Before we left the site an hour-and-a half later, night had settled in. The man who’d called to ask about my music, Rick Korn, asked if I could find my way to singing “Grace” for the small group that we were. I’d written “Grace” years before, but it was a song he’d heard and thought would be a good way to end our time down there. His request caught me off guard. I was a million miles away in my own thoughts and grief. Of course, I would sing, but could I? I wasn’t sure.

            I asked Delores and her sisters who had joined us if they would hum with me. They were caught off guard too, not knowing how to catch their breath. But we all sang. It was what we needed to do. I remember looking up at the sky like we were standing in a giant telescope looking out at the universe. I was in the habit of looking for Forrest out there. I sang and cried and smiled because how could I not. There was so much love and sadness pouring through all of us. It was an honor to be down there, and I will never forget it.

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I found an edited video of the concert this afternoon. I hadn’t seen it for many years. The concert was at The Beacon Theater in NYC and started with clips of my singing “Grace” at Ground Zero. Thanks to Doris Dembosky for recommending that I share this today. Here’s a link:

Voices of Inspiration, a concert for 9-11 First Responders