Posted by Roger Angell
Again and again in the first weeks and then months after 9/11, I found my mind turning to relatives and friends
of mine who had died before the smothering frightful event. My parents. My stepfather. An older sister and a
younger brother. Colleagues and close friends. Coop, a former schoolmate and college roommate. William Shawn.
Donald Barthelme. Bill Rigney, a baseball friend. Joseph Brodsky, a dazzling literary figure I'd met once or twice,
many of whose poems I loved. At first, I think I only wanted to talk with them, just I was doing with others then,
to reëstablish something safe and habitual with a trustworthy presence who didn't understand the horrific event any better than
I did, or perhaps, in a different way, simply to fill up the ugly days with talk, as we were all doing. While this was happening,
though, I began to notice that these departed, special voices and presences had altered in my mind. They had unexpectedly
become younger and seemed to exist in a brighter light. It didn't take long to figure that one out. They were innocents,
every one of them. They'd missed 9/11 and its dreary aftermath. They were less like us than before, farther away and
bathed in luck.
This wasn't exactly a new thought--it came in some form, surely, to surviving millions after Pearl Harbor or Pompeii--but it does
bring up a nice question. Are our predecessors older or younger than we are? Please include parents. I think I know the answer
and I find comfort in it. Watching a two-year-old granddaughter turning the pages of a book, I almost feel the noise and
rush of air around her as she begins to gather speed, ready to zip past me into the shining or dreadful decades up the line.
Bye-bye, Clara! Bye, Grandma!
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