It was the
first anniversary of 9/11 and I was remembering it with Matthew, who no longer slept in the same bed with me and Jay, a stranger who had emailed me after reading an invitation I had posted inviting anyone who wanted to join me to come to the ceremony at St. John the Divine Cathedral. Jay worked on Windows of the World, but had the day off a year ago, unlike many of his friends.
There were beautiful songs: "Love is In Need of Love Today", "The Eye is on the Sparrow". I remember the softness of the assembled crowd, like we had all come in from a bar fight or a brutal football game and weary, avoided banging each others bruises. The minister, a woman who had spent the last six months with the hard-hatted workers who wrenched apart the steel mass that was once the World Trade Center told us this:
"There will come a time when nobody alive will remember this day. We can take comfort in that. It will be read in history books by children who will know of this day, but will not know its shapes and contours, the hollow death that all of us feel. It will be just another day, because that is was memory does. It fades into nothingness. And we can take comfort in that."
And I took comfort in it. And when I told my parents about what she said, they didn't understand and thought it was macabre. Today, I think what the minister said was naive, or at least, overly optimistic. Since that first anniversary the ranks of the violently killed only grow and my children look doomed to experience, if not this tragedy, then some other.
A lot of people, especially in the press, have been asking if it is time to move on. If the annual Towers of Light, the shots of the grieving widows, the slow toll of the fire engine bell are necessary after so many others have died, both our own countrymen and women and civilians abroad. Does the focus on these dead take away from the dead which followed them?
I don't know the answer to that. What I know is that 9/11 has been and will probably always be the defining moment of my life. I remember the awful surreal quality of that day, in which my world, my home, my friends were shattered. But that's not why 9/11 is important to me. I remember going to Union Square less than a week after the attack and the pavement was buried under pillows of wax, embedded with fresh flowers and I remember sitting down in a circle with 20 or so people. Some guys from California were playing "
This Land is Our Land", that great Woody Guthrie song and the guys said "We're not here to say or do anything. We just saw what happened and wanted to know the rest of us cared about you."
I walked down to Houston Street one day. This was where the Ground Zero workers came in and out of the site. A new fire had just erupted from the ruins of Tower 7. As workers came back from the site, a crowd of people lined the Henry Hudson Parkway and applauded.
Some doctors deliberately tried to avoid the crowd by walking on the sidewalk, but found themselves being thanked by individuals who would press their hands into theirs. Not having anyone to treat at Ground Zero, some of the doctors saw they could at do what they could to heal the still living and accepted the handshake. Others were too frustrated to do anything but trudge past. Perky girls handed out Snickers and water bottles to truck drivers. There was applause and I thought to myself , "There is good in the world and there are heroes and they're all around me."
That's why I remember this day and why I always will. In spite of the death brought about in the name of those who lost their lives six years ago today, I am resolute in my conviction that we, the people of this country and this planet are capable of keeping the kindness and generosity of spirit of those days following 9/11 alive. Mark Twain said, "Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." This generation, you and I, are the ones who will tend to this day, who will shape its flame and define it for the ages. That is the work I think we are called to do. We can allow it to be shaped by the cynics and the greedy demagogues or we can fight for a better world. Six years in, we've only just begun.
Normally, I post the
Prayer of St. Francis today. While looking for something less overtly religious, I found
a version of the prayer written by Eric Chen, an autistic. Here's a part of it:
For it is by self-experience that one is touched
By self-forgiving that one is forgiven
By moving with the world that one moves the world
And by making history that one understands history
*Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress American Memory September 11th, 2001 Documentary Project.Labels: personal
