I rose, showered, walked to the nearest underground station – the autumnal morning sun was shining brightly, but there was still an aura of mist over the greener parts of the city – I pressed my Oyster card against the reader and wandered, somewhat bleary-eyed to the end of the platform to make sure there was at least a chance of getting a seat amongst the morning commuters. “INSECTS – Free Wallchart” the banner across the top of my newspaper read. I settled into the last free seat to read it and then cursed mentally as an elderly lady entered after me. I stood up, smiled, offered her the seat, which she took. We made polite small talk for a while until she got off and I stood silently and watched people for the rest of my journey. People going about their everyday habits, with their everyday hopes, living everyday lives. Everyday. Routine. Same old, same old. Humdrum. And yet each one remarkable, unique, exquisitely valuable, beautiful, impossible to recreate.
The reason I was hyperaware of just how wonderful each and every one of us are, and the extraordinary improbability even of our existence was, of course, because of today’s date and the knowledge that I had promised to write a tribute to a man murdered 5 years ago today, exactly. Someone who I’d never met and whom I was assigned randomly. The randomness was echoed in that just being on the wrong floor of a building played a role in his death. I can read extracts about his normal, everyday, unique life, but I cannot write a true eulogy for a man I didn’t know. Only to the normal men and women, with normal lives, that we often take so much for granted, on sunny September mornings.
Terrance Andrew Aiken. Computer Consultant. Murdered September 11th 2001.
Obituaries: New York Times CNN September11thvictims.com
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