My Experience in Manhattan, New York after September 11

I wrote this in a hotel in Manhattan, New York, six months after the tragedy of September 11.

I hate to have to order my thoughts and think first about what and how to write about my experience.  This is my fifth night in a hotel in Manhattan. I was shocked to notice how cheap it is suddenly to stay here. They lowered the prices because business is bad. My family, my husband, and two children are with me here. We had started our journey in Boston. We went there originally to visit with family members and friends then we decided to head to New York for a few days. We went to Manhattan. Six months have gone by since the tragic incident of what we now call 9/11.

What an impressive city New York is! What energy it carries! So many people!  The first time I visited New York was like two years ago and I wanted to get out of there real fast.  I think I was scared of it.  Scared of seeing so many people at once, scared of the traffic, scared of the noise. But since the tragedy of the World Trade Center, I feel so different. 

 I don’t know but in walking the streets of New York today, people don’t seem to be in such a horrible hurry to get anywhere like I saw them the last time I was here.  I don’t know if it’s just me but when I got on the train from Broadway to lower Manhattan I saw some sweet looking people.  I remember this lady that sitting across from me on the bus sneezed and several people around her in a chorus exclaimed, God bless you”, and she smilingly looked slowly at each person, at each one of us and responded, “thank you.” It wasn’t just a casual “thank you.”

My brother in law who lived in New York, lead the way to the area of “Ground Zero.”  “They don’t really let people deeply in the exact place of the tragedy”, he said, “but we can be in the area”, he continued. As I walked, not very rapidly, towards the ground zero area…it was as if a feeling of…well like when one is going to attend a funeral. I deeply felt that I was going to visit the corpse of a pasted loved one. I felt the weight, the heaviness of the heart and pain within.  And each step closer was very difficult. I did not “feel” at a given moment anything…at all…but I realized that I felt so extremely much that I think I did not know what to think of all that tragedy.  Lifted gates with pictures of loved ones and flags and candles and chains and rocks and just items in plain view, wreaths and flags, it went on and on, so many items to mention where placed and pinched between the gated holes and crevices.  I took pictures in slow motion almost afraid that I would disrespect the hallowed ground I was seeing.  I raised my head and all about me where the harsh and cruel reminders of the tragedy of September 11. My breathing was deep and intense. I felt my heart race and I could hear it in my throat. I felt pain. I was clinching and grinding my teeth, my lips became very small and knotted. “Oh my God, such evil” I whispered, over and over again, “Oh my God.” Evening approached us very quickly, I didn’t notice when it happened. Darkness just crept up on me, so much time had gone by and I didn’t really notice. I looked and looked at the notices placed on the boarded gates: HAVE YOU SEEN MY SON MIKE? Please call: then the phone number to call. And there was a picture of Mike. Poor Mike, I thought, poor Mike. My tears got in the way and couldn’t continue reading so many notices of family members and friends looking for loved ones.

In the night sky lit up with the pointed lights that now represented where the Twin Towers used to be. I looked up, up, up so high that my neck was now hurting. Could the lights reach the sky? Could God see these lights and bring down His light and have mercy of the people of New York?  I thought. In the darkness with the majestic lit up lights in the form of giant squares that now light up the Manhattan sky, I cried for New York.

The policeman and woman in their squad car were viewing our every move it seemed. Their look also seemed as the one you see on the face of the loved one of the deceased at the funeral.  There are other loved ones that observe you closely as you view the dead corpse as if they feel your pain as when they too cry with you in your pain and sorrow.  We gathered ourselves to slowly leave the site.  The officers were still viewing us.  I could not leave without first…like in the funerals I’ve visited of a loved one, when one approached the surviving loved one says how sorry one is for their loss.  I slowly and very respectfully decided to approach the vehicle of the officers who have their windows rolled all the way up and kindly motion to the one in the driver seat to lower his window.  He complies and I extend both my now somewhat cold hands onto his very warm rugged hands on that cool March 28, 2002 night. As our hands embraced, his two and my two, I felt his sorrow transmitted into my hands that were now starting to warm up. I felt his pain so deeply I was again almost in tears. “You represent New York, we grieve with you and we also thank you for all your hard work, we love you, we really love you,” I told him and the female officer sitting next to him. She too extended her hands now. “Thank you, thank you, almost in a whisper they responded.

My heart feels heavy, so heavy with pain…and grief.  My heart weights a ton of bricks.  It feels bitter, it feel anguish.  It feels New York City.  My feet are tired…so tired and weary.  They burn.  I’ve walked many miles it seems… today. I walked New York today…for the first time in my life.  I felt New York… today.  The city that bursts with energy…so much energy.  And yet I sensed New York so dead…with pain…today.

Today…I saw New York…I saw New York’s pain today.

I felt New York today.

I fell in love with New York today.

I saw the people…the eyes of the people of New York today.

They grieve…I saw their pain, today when I walked the streets of this vast city of lights, action and surrender today.
I talked to people today in New York…and they talked to me today. Tender, beautiful, unique and yet the same.

My heart cried today at ground zero. In the night sky lit with those majestic square formed lights where once stood the World Trade Center.

I looked up at the lights until my neck ached today, but I knew what ached more today.

Today I saw New York.

Today.

And a part of me changed forever.

By:

Rebecca Gutierrez

Written on March 28, 2002

Manhattan, New York

Coincidentally on the same date I had accepted the Lord as my personal Saviour on March 28, 1979