A visit to the ghosts of Ground Zero

But of course it is, and with it, almost 3,000 people, a few of whom I knew. I don’t want to claim that I knew any of them that well: I’m not trying to borrow the grief of those who suffered devastating losses. I only say that I knew them, and resent the absence of a real person, not “an American” or “a victim of 9/11.” When I stare down into the hole at the memorial’s heart, I think about them, and the buildings they died in, and I think: They were here, and real, and now they are gone, all of them gone. For 20 years, no one has known them.