The sky above my house in Mexico is blue this morning, the kind of blue sky that hung above the Twin Towers on my TV that morning – cloudless, infinite. In the parlance of aviation, a “severe clear” sky, so intensely blue with seemingly unlimited visibility and air so pure, it can blind a pilot.  With the previous day’s storms blown away from New York city, it was the quintessential Severe Clear morning – a great day for the ordinary travel that would take thousands of people to business meetings and conferences and end-of-summer vacations.

A little girl only a few months older than mine was on board United Airlines Flight 175. Just four years old and a nature-lover, little Juliana Valentine McCourt, and her mother, an Irish immigrant from Cork, were on their way to Disneyland, the happiest place on earth. They were close.  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 adolescent hormones, me by the effects of cancer treatment, we were – and remain – close, like peas in a pod.

We have the same piano hands. We love Sephora and dark chocolate-covered almonds, mashed potatoes, the smell of books, Derry Girls and the little dogs that love us. We are ‘friends’ on Facebook and Instagram, where I have promised not to gush too much in ways that embarrass her. We binge-watch Netflix originals  – me on The Bear 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 knowing that we once filled the heart of the man who died when we were far away from him and home one November a decade ago.

We’re not pessimistic; we just  know the other shoe can drop at any time. We’re ready for it, but sometimes, like everyone else, we tell ourselves that kind of thing is the kind of thing that only happens to someone else.

I watched on TV when United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into  the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Juliana and her mother and everyone on board died instantly.   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 11^th was the most important person on earth to somebody.”

–President George W. Bush, 12/11/01

Until that too-bright morning, I suppose I had taken for granted the sense of security I felt as an immigrant who had traded Northern Ireland for the United States. Foolishly, I had too quickly dropped my guard,  forgetting anything can and does happen. I had almost given up on reassuring myself that the sound of a car backfiring on the freeway was not a gunshot; that a clap of Monsoon thunder in the mountains was not a bomb timed to go off in the heart of a village on the busiest day of the year, that a shopping bag left behind on the bus was not packed with explosives.

Twenty years ago, my daughter and I first visited The Healing Field, a 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, heart achingly 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 were that September morning when I dropped her off at pre-school, to remember the blueness of the sky.

In a blink of an eye, she was 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 expanse of desert sky, I knew my daughter was not lost and also that such a thought is the one that scares me most.

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Colorful tulle butterflies are attached to the flagpoles in the Healing Field. Stuffed bears sit on the grass. Yellow ribbons wrapped around those flagpoles encircling the field represent the valor of those “first responders,” those sworn to protect and serve those within.  Ribbons, 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, trips to Disneyland 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 those lost, our flags flying at half-mast, footage of the World Trade Center’s final moments replayed on television retrospectives. Keyboard warriors will wax conspiratorial about what they think “really” 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 recently 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. 

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“The Names” is in dedication to all the victims of September 11 and their survivors.

The Names – Billy Collins

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