I like to watch things that are hard to watch. It’s my way of being a daredevil from the safety of my own couch, all the dangers trapped inside a talking box across the room. My hand rests on my trusty companion, the remote, and my forefinger dances on the power button, but I will myself not to push it. On September 10th, every year for as long as I can remember, I indulge in hours of 9/11 documentaries. Police officers, firefighters, businessmen all share their stories, giving delicious details that leave me salivating. In every film, at least one eye witness says one thing in particular that haunts me, that makes it impossible for me to shut my eyes at night, that makes me so hungry for more that my stomach feels like it’s eating itself. They each talk about the sound of bodies hitting the pavement after jumping from the twin towers. A sound they all describe as “indescribable”. It sounds awful, it’ll probably sound worse when I put it on paper, but I was starving to hear that sound.

It’s an old Jewish tradition, that when someone dies his or her immediate family members must drop a shovelful of dirt on the coffin. It seems like a nice tradition, a satisfying close to a day filled with stinging tears and bony hugs and lipstick smears on the rims of the glasses of water that people keep offering me and I keep accepting so I have an excuse not to talk. But as I look down the six foot hole of forever solitary confinement, his body seeming as far away as the falling twin towers on my TV, I am about to open my mouth and send vomit rather than dirt. My arms begin to shake from the weight of the mud, and it occurs to me to drop the shovel and throw myself into the hole. I mean I’ve been so mature, so well adjusted, so helpful the past two days as buzzing guests swarm my home. I can see them watching me as if I were the only white tiger in the zoo, their eyes full of fear and fascination, half hoping and half fearing that when they pull me in for a nauseatingly long hug, that I’ll break down and they’ll be the one that I confide in, but I don’t need to confide in anyone because I’m mature and well adjusted and helpful, but they're not buying into my facade. They’re just waiting for me to crack.

And I will crack like an egg if that’s what they want. In front of the loving eyes of my family and friends, I will throw myself down the hole as if I am Alice, following that white rabbit to Wonderland. But as it turns out, I’m not a daredevil. Stunts like that stay inside of my TV, and I watch them, curled under a blanket, reaching into an empty bag of chips, but still hungering for gore and drama and tragedy. With the inhale and exhale of an Olympic diver, I turn over the shovel and wet, heavy mud falls onto center the coffin. After years of constant rumbling, my stomach ceases to growl. The mud hits the shiny black coffin, right on his chest, and it makes a sound similar to a crack of thunder or a bat hitting a baseball. It’s not indescribable. It sounds like a body hitting the pavement.