20041221
robert, 29
on this day, december 21, 2004, the new york city medical examiner's office faxed us yet one more name to add to the identified victims of the september 11, 2001 terror attacks.
robert d w higley, 29, is a white male. that's all the information they will provide. maybe he'd just graduated from graduate school and started his first full-time job, a job he can finally call real, up in one of the two towers. maybe he was a mere intern, since jobs were beginning to get scarce by the end of the 2001 economic slump. maybe he was a mere cleaner assigned to five top floors every night.
we receive faxes from the nyc medical examiner's office because this office used to staff the "victims desk," a team of four reporters and one supervisor whose job it was to compile, check and verify the names of more than 3,000 victims of the three crash sites. ours is one of several lists maintained by media (cnn, the nashville tennessean and the new york times have lists), businesses (cantor-fitzgerald, who lost over 600 employees, has maintained one), insurance companies, hospitals, embassies, and city medical examiner offices.
family members called in to the office to ask whether their relatives' names were in our list. one such woman wanted to know if her brother was in ours. i remember her calling several other places, sobbing, pausing, breathing, and soldiering on to tell me she was looking for her brother. i walked over to the reporter to ask if they had this name in their lists - dead, missing, found. he was missing.
"thank you," she said, her breathing becoming stronger and easier. this means she can keep on looking. i learned then that there are some things you want to stay cloaked so that you can buy yourself time to recover.
"i hope you find him," was all i could say. time, the kindest weapon. i learned about that then, too.
i replaced the phone receiver. i walked over to the same reporter and asked if a name were in any of their lists. it was. it was early october. my colleague turned clipped but not emotionless. "this means that the family has already claimed insurance and signed a death certificate with the medical examiner's office," she said.
i logged on to the tennessean's victims database: jayceryll de chavez, 25. asian male. verified dead, oct. 4. he moved to new jersey long before my high school class graduated. time magazine featured a missing persons poster of him in a tuxedo. i forgot what bank company he was financial analyst for. i didn't know whether to call his sister and offer condolences. "please pray that they find him," was the last thing she asked, in a confident voice, late in september.
it has been three years, three months and 10 days since the sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. time holds in check many things.
---
The Names
by 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. ¶ 12/21/2004 05:24:00 PM
robert d w higley, 29, is a white male. that's all the information they will provide. maybe he'd just graduated from graduate school and started his first full-time job, a job he can finally call real, up in one of the two towers. maybe he was a mere intern, since jobs were beginning to get scarce by the end of the 2001 economic slump. maybe he was a mere cleaner assigned to five top floors every night.
we receive faxes from the nyc medical examiner's office because this office used to staff the "victims desk," a team of four reporters and one supervisor whose job it was to compile, check and verify the names of more than 3,000 victims of the three crash sites. ours is one of several lists maintained by media (cnn, the nashville tennessean and the new york times have lists), businesses (cantor-fitzgerald, who lost over 600 employees, has maintained one), insurance companies, hospitals, embassies, and city medical examiner offices.
family members called in to the office to ask whether their relatives' names were in our list. one such woman wanted to know if her brother was in ours. i remember her calling several other places, sobbing, pausing, breathing, and soldiering on to tell me she was looking for her brother. i walked over to the reporter to ask if they had this name in their lists - dead, missing, found. he was missing.
"thank you," she said, her breathing becoming stronger and easier. this means she can keep on looking. i learned then that there are some things you want to stay cloaked so that you can buy yourself time to recover.
"i hope you find him," was all i could say. time, the kindest weapon. i learned about that then, too.
i replaced the phone receiver. i walked over to the same reporter and asked if a name were in any of their lists. it was. it was early october. my colleague turned clipped but not emotionless. "this means that the family has already claimed insurance and signed a death certificate with the medical examiner's office," she said.
i logged on to the tennessean's victims database: jayceryll de chavez, 25. asian male. verified dead, oct. 4. he moved to new jersey long before my high school class graduated. time magazine featured a missing persons poster of him in a tuxedo. i forgot what bank company he was financial analyst for. i didn't know whether to call his sister and offer condolences. "please pray that they find him," was the last thing she asked, in a confident voice, late in september.
it has been three years, three months and 10 days since the sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. time holds in check many things.
---
The Names
by 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. ¶ 12/21/2004 05:24:00 PM
