Sept 11

Rosemary

It was many years after the events of 9/11 that I learned that someone I knew had died in the fall of the World Trade Center.

I found out purely by accident,driving home from a visit to Boston, punching the radio tuner buttons, trying to find something interesting to listen to.

I heard a voice singing, and said to myself, Hey, that’s Jack Hardy! Naturally, I paused on the station, and drove along, glad to have found it, listening with my ears wide open, and my brain fully engaged, as I did whenever listening to Jack’s music.

After a bit, I thought:  Hm, I don’t know that song… must be new.

Then:  No, that can’t be Jack… because… That can’t have happened.   I would have heard something.

But it was Jack singing, and it had happened.

New York Times article from two weeks after 9/11 .

Jeff Hardy’s NYT portrait.

The tribute on Jack’s website.

I didn’t know Jeff well. I met him several times, but saw him play dozens of times. He was just, sort of … always there.

By the time I heard the song, on the road from Boston to home, it had been years since 9/11 — long enough for the events to start to drift away from the immediate, toward the abstract.

The song brought it back from the abstract. Because I found out now, it was happening now.

A young man I know, Marine Lance Corporal Adrian Simone, was wounded in Afghanistan last month, where his squad encountered an IED.

That’s now, too.

He just got back to the states a couple of weeks ago. I hear he’s doing well. There have been some great advances in prosthesis, and it will take some time. Still… doing well.

And that’s now, too.

Seems like everything is now, lately.


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