It’s still here. Things still happen on it. You’ve got a friend’s birthday party written in it, and another friend’s wedding. You know that a whole day can’t go anywhere, really, but it seems like they — the “they” in “you know, they say” — would have canceled it at some point, found a way to skip over it like the thirteenth floor of a building. But no, it’s there, and as it gets closer, you wonder — how long will you do this?

For as long as you can. You will do this for as long as you can, this remembering. You will watch it happen again, on your scratchy videotape of the HBO “In Memoriam” special; you will hate seeing the buildings still standing, torn and smoking, because you know how it ends, but you will sit in front of that tape for as long as you can, until it breaks. You will listen to the reading of the names for as long as you can. You will lean out the window of your car to see the columns of light for as long as you can. You will drive past the site on the West Side Highway and look at all that sky there, sky where it doesn’t belong, blue and silent and empty, for as long as you can.

You will drive other places, too — up and around the elbows of the BQE, Brooklyn laid out on both sides of you, the rusty factory fonts standing on the horizon to the right, church spires and warehouses and sea to the left, and the lady in green at ten o’clock. Over the Brooklyn Bridge, the lattices overhead fuzzing out the AM radio signal and the Chrysler Building nestled into the skyline. Down 4th Avenue in Park Slope, where the downtown looks like Oz. You will think of what is gone, and you will think of what is still here. The greatest city in the world is still here.

The Brooklyn Bridge is still here. The Angelika is still here. Gray’s Papaya is still here, Broadway is still here, Yankee Stadium is still here, Trump Tower, traffic, Macy’s, coffee cups whose pleasure it is to serve you, the Times, Coney Island, the subway, your friends, your family, and you. Still here. All still here.

The memory is still here, of course, and it’s getting thin in spots, but you will carry it with you and pass it around like a cried-on clipping, pressing down the warped unreadable spots with the heel of your hand, and around a table, your friends and family will squeeze together to look at it and point to the clear parts, the Magic-Markered letters from third grades in Tulsa, the people who stood in line at the Blood Center for days, the pizza your mom saved for you that night. The Empire State Building (still here), defiantly full of tourists (also still here). Birthday parties. Weddings. A hundred thousand small graces, and each other. Still here. Still here, still thanking God for it, for as long as you can.

You will make sure to tell your family “I love you” at the end of every phone call, even the ones about NJ Transit schedules. You will clap your hands and shout “there they are!” during the opening sequence of Manhattan. You will remember dusk at the Canadian border, and November baseball, and Dan Rather’s tears, and the women in the park wearing pictures of their little brothers around their necks, little brothers in tuxedos and graduation gowns, little brothers on rowboats and at dinner tables, little brothers in front of Christmas trees.

You will do this for as long as you can, trying to bear witness to what is gone, trying to honor what is still here, too, in your own little way, lining up happinesses and counting them, weighing the things around your own neck and finding them light. You know it isn’t much, your reminding, your gratitude, but you will keep on with it anyway, every year, hoping it’s at least something — a small grace, a big sister, still here, still remembering, for as long as you can.

September 13, 2004

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