Unlike many, and like many others, I feel September 11th ought to be treated as not another day. As hard as it is, as painful as it can be, this is a day to remember what happened, now ten years ago, to pause and reflect, to grieve and yes, move on.
Today, I will be going in to work, though I had requested the day off. It's not a big deal, it's a schedule, and weekends are hard to cover in my store, and I've had the morning to watch the ceremonies at Ground Zero (how odd - I really never say "Ground Zero" much, though, of course, it undeniably is that). Still, I think going in to work, treating this as just another day, hawking coffee and pastries to the masses, is just inappropriate.
I understand the instinct to try and put 9/11 and what happened that day behind us. It was one day, life goes on, there's so little use in the end for sadness and grieving, it's time to move on. We all grieve and react in our own ways, and no one, really, should tell another what to do or how to do it. That's one of the painful parts of watching the families of those who died on 9/11 - who's place is it to say to them "we need to move on" or "you need to get over this"?
Last night, on cue, MSNBC replayed a somewhat edited version of the Today show from the morning of 9/11. I've watched it a couple of times, at least parts of it (and also a replay of coverage from local channel WABC), and I'm struck, always, by how the events of that day unfolded in real time. We had no idea, really, what we were watching unfold. We didn't know, as the hole in the North Tower burned, that for most of the people above the fire, it was already over. We couldn't imagine that, in about three hours, there would be no more World Trade Center.
After a few minutes of watching last night, I gave up. It was too sad, dredged up to many emotions. I've been feeling, all week, that the inundation of memories and articles and TV reports was too much. I picked up a paper one day last week and started an article about the completion of the 9/11 memorial. I was weeping by the second paragraph.
I understand the desire to move on, I share the need to look away. But what that amounts to, I think, is pretending. Let's pretend that things are all better now. Let's pretend life is all back to normal, whatever normal is, in the life of the economic collapse that 9/11 helped create. Let's pretend we can work and shop and travel and do everything we ever did just the way we always did it. And maybe, just maybe, all the sad stuff, and the grief, and the remnants of buildings and lives and senses of security destroyed will just go away.
Since 9/11, I've developed a renewed appreciation for, of all things, Pearl Harbor Day. In my youth, I understood that Pearl Harbor was a key moment in the hostory of World War II and America's involvement in it. But since 9/11, I've realized why - because of the way Pearl Harbor forced us, as a nation, to face our vulnerability. And on another, vastly more important level, it was an enormous tragedy where thousands of lives were lost, for no good reason at all.
We can pretend that 9/11 is something other than what it is - a day when our nation, especially it's largest city and our nation's capital both, has to stop and remember a tragedy, a disaster, a dramatic event. We don't have to make a memorial day for 9/11 into a national day of remembrance, though, in fact, that's what we do. We can pretend that it doesn't matter and we can pretend to move on.
I'm just not a big fan of pretending.
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