There are many ways to mark time. Some do it in terms of decades or important
events, like weddings or birthdays or graduations. There are also the dates of catastrophic
events, such as FDR’s statement on Dec. 7, 1941 as a “date which will live in infamy”
when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the U.S. declared war on Japan. People also remember where they were on Nov.
22, 1963, when
John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Those dates shaped their respective generations. Sept. 11,
2001, the day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, as well as
the crash of Flight 93 in the bucolic Pennsylvania countryside, shaped
mine.
As
I ran through Colt State Park this morning, I was struck by how similar this
morning was to the same date 16 years ago, a thousand miles apart. Clear skies, cool and sunny, low
humidity. When I got home from my walk
that morning, Nels was on the phone in his office and gestured for me to turn
on the television in the bedroom across the hall. The first tower was a smoking mess and then I
watched another plane fly into the second tower. I could only sit there on the edge of the bed
and cry as the commentators tried to make sense of what was happening. When I finally roused myself to go to work,
everyone looked as shell-shocked as I felt.
It was clear from the very first plane crash that life was going to be forever changed and a deep feeling of dread lasted for months. I had never, ever listened to talk radio, but found myself glued to NPR. Steve Inskeep’s calm voice narrated the unfolding events each morning, and also provided glimmers of hope and moments of compassion even as the news remained dismal.
For the first time in
16 years, I was caught by surprise this morning when I checked the date. I often commemorated the date in my morning
journal, but not always. Here are a few
excerpts from past years:
In 2002, my cousin, 42 at the time (younger than I am
now), died suddenly of heart failure during the first week of September. It clearly felt like too much to deal with
post-Sept. 11 mania:
I feel like I’ve been
riding this torrent of media overload the entire week prior to this day, and now
it will be even worse. I don’t
understand this. I don’t want to relive
that day nor the weeks that followed.
Why do others want to do so? ...I still remember the shock, I remember
the numbness of the day…Plus I’m dealing with my own grief about David’s
death. It’s not that I have cried. I mostly have felt numb, again. I keep thinking wow, I’m over it as I go
about my daily business, but I’m not. I
think about him and his family often. I
just see him in the coffin with all that makeup on. He didn’t look asleep; he just looked
dead.
In 2005, I wrote:
Four years ago
today. It seems longer than that. It seems like we have always lived under this
administration in this fear-mongering world, where a constant state of worry
holds us hostage. But then I look out
and see the geese flying by, and I feel okay again about the world. It’s a temporary feeling and as fictional as
the fear, I suppose. The world is what
it is. It’s just so difficult to see
that and not all the crap we put around it.
In 2010, it was simply: “Here it is, September
11. Nine years later. I remember.”
On the tenth anniversary, I wrote:
It’s 5:55 on the 10th
anniversary of Sept. 11. I have done my
mourning and thinking already this week.
I just hope that there is no new fresh disaster. Like others, I have remembered where I was,
how I thought the world changed at the time…I see how I’ve changed now…I see
how proud we can be of all who worked together to perform rescue
operations. But I also see that the
over-patriotism, the arrogance, the ethnocentrism in those American flags
waving from cars. It feels like
overcompensating.
In 2013, I wrote:
Ahh…I just realized
what day it is. The 12th
anniversary. I’ve been thinking about it
on the beautiful mornings, because I’ll never forget how great that walk was
that day, how I felt so lucky and encouraged, and then how I came home and saw
the television. The impact of that day
is still inscribed in my physical and emotional body like no other non-personal
event.
In 2014, six months after my friend Jenn died in a
car accident, I wrote:
And now today is the
anniversary of Sept. 11. When I think
about days that changed me, this is up there.
In a way, it’s like learning of Jenn’s death. It seemed so impossible that something like
that could happen, and at first the dread that something more could happen, and
then the long years of war afterward, which was about fear and mourning, but
also about coming together. Maybe that’s
what needs to happen for those of us grieving for Jenn.
We
all have ways of remembering the events that demonstrate the world is not
orderly or predictable. These same
events also, paradoxically, remind us that developing a sense of calm and stability
supports our best selves and work (maybe even survival). As a
character from Elan Mastai’s book, All Our Wrong Todays, said, “There’s no
such thing as the life you’re supposed to have.” True, but we have a responsibility to be our
best selves regardless in spite of—or because of—events like Sept. 11.
