The Things We Leave Behind

The epic dimensions of Tuesday’s tragedy have summoned a language of superlatives. The worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. New York’s tallest buildings, laid flat. The biggest blow to America’s sense of security since Pearl Harbor.

Historians eventually will try to make sense of the tides sweeping through America. For the moment, however, the random mementos that the victims left behind give an eloquent voice to some of the nation’s private yearnings. An unmade bed, a prized set of golf clubs or a small glass souvenir from a long-ago family outing.

Every one of the some 5,300 missing or dead in the attacks left traces of a life, each as carefully unique as a snowflake. Collectively, these simple things form a mosaic of human experience, a national scrapbook dedicated to a great national theme: the singularity of every individual.

While investigators in New York continue foraging for forensic evidence, it will be left to the families of the missing people to begin sifting through their loved ones’ personal artifacts. Inevitably, in the weeks and months ahead, there will be questions about what to keep and what to let go.

Last week, Americans joined in an elegiac national symphony of somber pride and grief. The stories below are of a different scale, evidence of the loss and longing, and in a few cases--against all odds--of hope.

Reed Johnson

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Melissa Valcarcel rolled her father’s empty wheelchair into the backyard, where he would use his digital camera to photograph a full life: the cherry tree that shaded his barbecues, the white rosebush from which he’d clip bouquets for wife, Mariam, the relatives who played dominoes on a table. In his chair and from behind his camera, he would make sure everyone could be seen, that everyone was smiling.

William Valcarcel, 54, was stricken with polio at age 5 and unable to use his left leg. He likes to call his wheelchair his “other set of legs” and his new camera his extra set of eyes. Together they are his window on the world, a world that revolves around his family.

Valcarcel was at work Tuesday in another wheelchair as supervisor accountant for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance on the 87th floor in the south tower of the World Trade Center. After the first hijacked plane struck, he phoned his wife and said: “That wasn’t my building that got hit, but I’m getting out of here.” He needed help getting down the stairs, said Melissa, 22, who refuses to believe her father is dead.

Valcarcel has a “no-fear” attitude about life: He has hang-glided, is an avid swimmer and talked about parachuting and whitewater kayaking.

Another daughter, 26-year-old daughter Lisa, pointed to the refrigerator door, three-quarters of it covered with her father’s family photos.

“He needs to finish that door,” Melissa said. “There’s still lots of space at the bottom.”