My Own Memorial
I tried to post this as a comment on Meat Cheese Bun, but the computer gods were against me...
Five years ago, I, too, was woken with news of impending doom--50 miles away, about 10 blocks from where my sister was probably getting ready to leave for work. It turns out she had left early that day, and was already out of the city limits on her way to Connecticut when the planes hit. Between my sister and I, we didn't lose about 35 people that day: people who were running late for work, people who had cancelled meetings, people who had postponed their flights.
An exodus to Connecticut followed, with people crashing in guest rooms and on couches throughout the area. We all went out for dinner for a few days: we wanted to be together doing something vaguely normal. We avoided talk of the disaster we had escaped, we avoided talking about the people we knew who we were pretty sure had passed away. We talked about the past, about our childhoods, about our travels throughout the world. We talked about sports, about the weather. When the words ran out, our eyes carried the message: we were glad to be alive and together. We were lucky, very lucky, and we knew it.
I've found over the past five years that people who lived near New York or D.C. or that Pennsylvania field had a different experience on September 11, 2001. It's a raw wound, and the scale of loss is unimaginable. Everyone, it seems, knows someone who was killed, and for many the people they lost were close friends or relatives. The skyline is different now, the site of the towers still unfinished, still gaping. There's plenty of politicking about the memorial, for good reason: I don't think that New York is really ready to mourn. The whole event is still too close, too fresh, too immediate. One needs distance to mourn, distance for words to even come close to making meaning. Five years later, that distance doesn't yet exist.
Five years ago, I, too, was woken with news of impending doom--50 miles away, about 10 blocks from where my sister was probably getting ready to leave for work. It turns out she had left early that day, and was already out of the city limits on her way to Connecticut when the planes hit. Between my sister and I, we didn't lose about 35 people that day: people who were running late for work, people who had cancelled meetings, people who had postponed their flights.
An exodus to Connecticut followed, with people crashing in guest rooms and on couches throughout the area. We all went out for dinner for a few days: we wanted to be together doing something vaguely normal. We avoided talk of the disaster we had escaped, we avoided talking about the people we knew who we were pretty sure had passed away. We talked about the past, about our childhoods, about our travels throughout the world. We talked about sports, about the weather. When the words ran out, our eyes carried the message: we were glad to be alive and together. We were lucky, very lucky, and we knew it.
I've found over the past five years that people who lived near New York or D.C. or that Pennsylvania field had a different experience on September 11, 2001. It's a raw wound, and the scale of loss is unimaginable. Everyone, it seems, knows someone who was killed, and for many the people they lost were close friends or relatives. The skyline is different now, the site of the towers still unfinished, still gaping. There's plenty of politicking about the memorial, for good reason: I don't think that New York is really ready to mourn. The whole event is still too close, too fresh, too immediate. One needs distance to mourn, distance for words to even come close to making meaning. Five years later, that distance doesn't yet exist.
posted by Al at 7:26 AM
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