We all knew something was wrong. But for the remainder of the school day, as kids were picked up by their parents in droves, the televisions were kept firmly black and we completely in the dark.
When I finally got home (my parents hadn't picked me or my two brothers up from school; my mom later explained that she hadn't wanted to alarm us), I watched the news. And watched it for hours. My young mind couldn't understand the full atrocity of what happened. But I starkly remember going upstairs to take a shower and crumpling in the bathroom, shocked, sickened, and horrified by what I'd seen. I didn't think the world would ever feel right again, feel safe again.
I can only imagine what it was like for those who lost a loved one that day. Lost someone so special in an act so senseless, so unnecessary. In the days that followed, I'd pick up the paper and read the stories, look at the pictures. Tragedy had a face, and it made the disbelief even harder to cope with. In that sense, I can understand why The Falling Man photo, concrete evidence of the sheer destruction of that day, would outrage people. But I'm not disgusted by it. I wouldn't demand it to be removed from the front pages of every newspaper in the country.
The picture itself doesn't almost feel real. There's something incredibly unreal about knowing you're looking at a man's final seconds on Earth. Throughout reading the Esquire article attached to the photo, I kept asking myself the question, "Would I have jumped? Could I have knowingly ended my own life?" It's a chilling question, but I don't find it a chilling image. There's something serene about it, accepting. I wouldn't want to stare at it for all of eternity, but I also don't believe that it compromises that man's dignity. His story may never be completely unearthed, but he has been immortalized through this photograph, his story giving a face to a tragedy suffered by thousands. Just one photograph on a day where images were necessary to tell this story.
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