Brief memories

A year ago in “Diary of a Tragedy,” the NEWS printed the personal stories of several people directly affected by the attacks of Sept. 11. Recently, those people were asked to reflect on the past 12 months. This is one of their stories.

Caitlin Shetterly

It seems so much closer than a full year. If I tip my head back and close my eyes I can still smell the crematorium our city became, I can still hear sirens wailing into the night. I can still feel the fear- of course, it hasn’t gone away. The only difference now is that I feel angry instead of just shocked and grief stricken. Angry at a world so full of hatred, at policy that causes suffering, at an administration that I’m sure knew. Just don’t get me started. I’m angry.

I spent my August in Belfast, Maine, acting in a play called “Goodbye/Goodbuy” in the 15 Minute Festival. In the play, my role as Terry was of a youthful and ebullient yet strangely disconnected shop clerk in the wake of Sept. 11th. Terry’s love of life and simple things like going to dinner with her boyfriend, or buying a great shirt that goes with everything was starkly set against my co-actor Shanti Parson’s role of Johanna, a woman whose life is destroyed by the disaster- her best friend was inside. The morning of our opening night on Aug. 23rd, the air was dry – warm but with a slight bite like a perfect Macintosh apple. I think it was the air – the feeling. It felt the same. Maybe that’s why I reached for my I (LOVE) NY T-shirt. Maybe it was the air, I’m not sure. But I put it on and I remember saying to my boyfriend David, “You know it seems weird to wear this here. Like maybe it doesn’t mean as much when we’re out of New York.” We were eating breakfast at Chase’s Daily and suddenly when I said this it all came flooding back to me, and my voice broke and I put my head down on the table and I sobbed. For the first time in a long time it all came back. Probably because I let it. Maybe because of the air.

Last night I asked David, “What will we do on the 11th?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe bike along the Hudson all the way downtown?”

“Maybe water,” I said. The day after, we went all over the city, all the way downtown with water, big jugs and juice boxes and popsicles and sodas. So this year, maybe we’ll hand out water – give the gift of a cool drink on a warm clear day. Maybe the air will be the same. I don’t know. I just know that nothing will ever be the same.

Caitlin Shetterly is a writer who grew up in Surry. She now lives in New York City. Her book “Fault Lines: Stories Of Divorce” was published by the Putnam Berkley Group in September 2001, one week before 9/11.