His life as a puzzle

She thought she could see his body dangling from the tower. Even after it fell, rumpled, was turned to rubble and filled the streets and lungs and minds with its destruction, she imagined him there, on one of those spikes, on what was left of the structure of the tower. She would see debris, she would spot something looking soft, not metallic, and think "There, there he is". She just could not fathom him disappearing without leaving anything of himself behind.

She would, later, when the spikes and the structures of the towers had been cleared away, when the debris would be discarted to Fresh Kills (what a name, what a name, she thought, as if the place had been prepared to receive the rests of the towers, of him, of the people), receive word, a few time, that they had found him. Found pieces of him. A tooth. A finger. His left foot. 

She bought a lot at the cemetary, and would open the grave after each call. She wouldn't rest, she said, until she had all of him, all the pieces, as if he was a jigsaw puzzle, as if that act of waiting for the parts of him that had remained after the explosion and fall of the tower was the only way to love him.

And then they told her that it was all they could find. That what was left of the puzzle (his hand, the one with the wedding ring, his heart, his ear, the left one, because she had the right one) must have been turned to dust. Couldn't be found. Sorry, ma'am, said the medical examiner. Can't do more for you.

It was like losing him all over again.