"These windows could never break," I would think every time the mechanical window-cleaning device made its noisy trip up and down the outside of my office building. On the 44th floor, my office was located less than halfway to the top of the skyscraper. It never seemed that high to me, even though, while sitting at my desk, I could look out onto the rooftops of tall buildings.
"What a beautiful view!" people would unfailingly exclaim when they entered my office. Beyond the immediate rooftops, a scene worthy of a postcard stretched out across the triple panes of glass. Two rivers converged at land’s end while a bridge spanned two states in the distance. On sunny days, shards of light glinted off the water as boats, the size of bathtub toys from such height, glided gracefully along. It was quite a lovely view, actually. Funny, but I never spent much time taking it in while I hurried through my workdays.
It hasn’t completely sunk in yet that I’ll never see that view again.
Now, from time to time, I find myself needing to locate an important document. Unthinkingly, I say to myself, "Oh, right, that’s on a disk." Then I picture a square disk sitting atop other disks. Beige, plastic disks that lay unboxed in the corner of a drawer. A brushed metal drawer in a wrap-around desk. A custom-order desk that matches a handcrafted cabinet. A specially designed cabinet that stands in the corner of an office. An office on the 44th floor with a beautiful view.
An office now scorched and sliced and splintered and squashed and smashed and shattered and scattered. A cabinet now mingled with files and contracts and calendars and books and faxes and agendas and memos and letters and "while you were out" messages and Post-its and Dilberts and framed photos of children. A desk now melded to computers and printers and postage meters and telephones and staplers and tape dispensers and pushpins and pens and mugs and business card holders and engraved plaques. A drawer fused to metal and glass and wood and plastic and vinyl and fabric and paper and bones and flesh. A disk now laying atop a pile of rubble.
I cannot bring myself to go near there. I still feel that one day soon, I will rush down the concourse, late for work, and push through a revolving door. A revolving door that opens into a lobby. A lobby that leads to a bank of elevators. Elevators that go up to an office. An office on the 44th floor with a beautiful view. A view from a building that once stood guard very near land’s end.