I will remember
Today has an eery yet beautiful quality to it. The sun is shining and the sky is an endless near perfect blue, reminiscent of that day etched in our memories forever, some moreso than others.
I remember where I was when it happened. I remember walking through the hall of my college, having started class after teh first plane hit, and seeing teachers and students pooled in the hall and pockets of the building where televisions were set up. I remember the look on some peoples' faces as I passed them to see what was so important. There was shock, devastation and disbelief. It is hard to describe what the mood felt like in one word but, it was enough for me to go back home. It was like I was walking through a collective half dream, a nightmare that we all shared with the atrocities taking place, lending the present, the now, some kind of universal head shake in negation. We were not asking why, but all inwardly, saying no. As if our collective resistance against what was happening could erase it, that we could all just wake up.
I went home and turned the television on, as nobody else was home. What I saw in the silence of my little apartment, that I shared with my brother, sister, my mother and both my grandparents, it was rare to be home alone and even rarer that the apartment was this quiet. I never sat down, I stood clutching the remote in my hand, looking at the images on the screen and still thinking "No." My mind raced over not the why or the how of the tragedy unfolding but all those people. For a moment, knowing I had ample family in New York, for a moment, I looked at the images of the people stretched out of the windows, the billowing smoke and I thought; what if my family is in there? And then I saw The Jumpers and my knees buckled. They were these specks on the screen for brief flashes, some spinning, other rolling and some just plummeting and to know that these were not just bodies, but people. People who had made the decision to die, people that had lost hope, that knew what was going to happen, that were living the horrendous tragedy, and who decided upon this open and somewhat liberating death.
The months after 9/11 were hard and still held for me this kind of bad dream afluence. I read stories, saw shows that examined things and I always felt a sense that I was there but I wasn't. I cried, and worried, and felt completely helpless on other occasions. Being where I was in Canada, asking myself what could I have done, what can I do. Every so often I'd catch, on my way to classes after that, I always had to pass the firehouse, and I saw,a t a constant after 9/11 trucks decorated with small u.s flags, and it filled me with a sense of pride, and helped me focus on the fact that not only was this a tragedy but, in a morbid sense, it had shaken the world, and the world responded with hope.
Today, we are told to remember, to never forget but, what I can't help thinking about is not only will I never forget but as a person, as an individual, as a human being, a citizen of the world, we can not. The ripples that spread after that day affected everyone. From the family of the voctims, to the media reporters who took the footage of what was going on and broght it into our livingrooms, to the releif workers, to the men and women who put on their fatigues and went to war. Everyone has been affected and will be feeling this in one way or another for a long time.
And today, with the defeat of the monster who planned and put the order out for the nightmare to become a reality, with his demise, this is only another step in the collective healing process that we all must face. To scale this down to a more tangible effect, for me, I think about the victims of a violent crime. When the police investigators come to your house to tell you your loved one has died, you do not start to heal completely until you fill the void of finding and/or prosecuting the one who brought the untimely death to your loved one.
And so today, with it's eery hue of a perfect day, I will not forget, I will remember what happened, and think with sympathy and renewed hope for all those affected, all those lives that changed as so many other ended. This is another chapter in the healing process, my sympathies and condolences go out to everyone of them, but still my thanks and appreciation is also handed down tot he brave men and women of the armed forces and its constituents who sacrifice their safety for the freedom of so many.
I will remember because I can not and will not forget the event that told the collective story of the humanistic tradition of the world.