SO MUCH TAKEN; SO MUCH GIVEN
FOR US FORGETTING IS NOT AN OPTION
AND THAT IS HOW IT SHOULD BE
TAGS: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 TERRORIST ATTACKS,
WORLD TRADE CENTER TWIN TOWERS – NYC,
UNNATURAL DEATH, THE PASSAGE OF TIME,
REMEMBRANCE, TRIBUTE TO THOSE TAKEN,
GRATITUDE FOR WHAT WAS GIVEN,
FDNY, PAPD, NYPD
(Sunday
September 1, 2019. Battery Park, NYC) The familiar annual rituals are ten days
away. They will be conducted with all due respect and solemnity at the Memorial
Glade, the site upon which our Twin Towers once proudly stood. Names of those who perished in the attacks
here in New York City on February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001 in the World
Trade Center Twin Towers will be read by members of their families as will be the
names of those who died 18 years ago on
9/11 at the Pentagon in Washington, DC and a field in Shanksville,
Pennsylvania. The haunting sounds of
bagpipes and the crystalline trumpet notes of Taps always haunt the soul and
provide an appropriately moody soundtrack before and after the reading of the
names. The polished fire bell will be struck,
moments of significance observed in silence, and within hours the bulk of those
assembled will depart returning home to
their lives and families no freer of remorse and grief than they were when as
they are when they make the annual trek to or Hallowed Ground.
Being
close to New York harbor, the briny scent of the sea is prominent as the breeze
from the northwest hustles the air along.
There is something primitive in that scent; it is registered in the
innermost structures of the human brain.
It seems to fit the mood this part of town evokes on days all year round
but especially on the day one week hence.
It is at this most southern tip of the island of Manhattan that we meet the
sea. It is the scent of movement, of
arrivals and departures, of the cyclicality of the tides; tides as another
marker of time’s passage. There is a comfort, though, given by the ebb and flow
of the endless tides. It is on the tides that both promise and hope ride; the
undercurrents and eddies of morbid and morose concentration need not warrant
concern. It is here that we will feel the raw sense of loss as acutely as we
did 18 years ago. We will recall who we
lost and value who we still have.
**********
Death,
in all its guises is never really expected.
Sure, death has a smoother texture when it takes an elderly parent or
grandparent; a satiny gracefulness when it comes as the ultimate relief from a
long, protracted or debilitating and degenerative disease process. We accept death as the price of growing old
and the growing part of that equation is typically thought of one made over the
course of decades. We grow up, some
marry, have children of their own and so it goes. The tempo of life is kept by heart beats and
ticks on the clocks. Calendar pages
flip, seasons change, and it is only after a mad dash of years has somehow
slipped by like an eel visible through the murky waters as a shadow just out of
reach below the surface calm, that we realize just how fast it all goes.
At
some point for most, our age and lifetime become a simple arithmetic equation
requiring nothing more than the ability to add and subtract. When we reach an age where we fully
appreciate that we are closer to the end than we are to the beginning, is when
the cruelty and sadness of time’s inexorable march takes hold. If may only be during fleeting, idle moments
as we go about that which constitutes our daily life that the equation makes
itself known like a fly landing on your ear, an annoyance to be swatted away. Sure, we can see it, the linear certitude of
time in the mirror, on the faces and bodies of the children we held and
nurtured as newborns now grown, gone on, and occupied with their own
particulars.
Modern
medical science has expanded the length and quality of our lives. Perhaps, just for this simple equation, the
age of 90 is the endpoint. Certainly, in
this case a person who celebrates their 50th or 55th
birthday has indeed begun the downward trek towards the end. And, as time passes while neighbors and
coworkers, cousins and siblings begin to die, we become, even just in those
moments, more cognizant of our mortality; the inevitability of our own demise.
We
may begin to give serious thought to our pending death and “make arrangements”;
write an advanced directive or living will.
We define what conditions we believe we would not want to live
under. We might make it known that we do
not to be kept “alive” if our heartbeats and respirations are more a product of
Con Ed than our own physiology.
Certainly, no one wants to exist in a chronic comatose state. When neurological function can no longer be
detected by monitors, whoever lived in that body is no longer present: brain
death is actual death and there is no coming back once that chasm has been
traversed.
Perhaps
it is the simple arithmetic of so much of the unnatural death on Tuesday,
September 11, 2001, that is the saddest.
The overwhelming majority of those innocents who lost their lives that
day were young, vital, active, engaged and certainly not expected to die when
they awoke that morning to catch a plane or go to work. The thousands of smiling faces on makeshift
posters that sprung up all over New York City, the sidewalk memorials that seemed
to appear magically overnight, depicted young, vibrant people. The faces of the Members of Service of the
FDNY all so healthy and hearty looking; the NYPD and PAPD Officers all on the
job that fateful morning with hopes and dreams of retirement days still years
off in the far distance. Yes, what was
taken from us that day was the best of us.
Our youth taken in what had been, up until that gorgeous September
morning, the most unspeakable, unimaginable manner,as left those who remained
to forever feel the weight of that loss just as the amputee still feels the
pain in a limb long since removed.
Death
is always painful, always difficult but when death strikes like an act of the
Old Testament God in a fury of nature it delivers an additional shock. Not that the deaths of this day 18 years ago
were an act of God in any way, shape or form; they were an act of no one’s god,
they were the acts of evil in its most pure, unvarnished, methodical
delivery. Yes, it was a shock, a shock
like none of us had ever heard, seen, felt, smelled, and tried to comprehend in
the moment.
The
stark dichotomies of that morning in Lower Manhattan lent the atrocity an even crueler
hellishness. That amazingly clear,
cloudless, azure New York City September sky suddenly marred by angry clouds of
billowing, black smoke, orange flames raging from windows as helpless souls
crowded at broken out windows seeking relief, redemption or just another gulp
of air. Likely all of them above those
fires realized on some level that rescue was remote. Conversely, the Firemen who ran up those
hundreds and hundreds of stairs ascending in the narrow stairwell passing the
descending from above never gave up on the belief that rescue was
imminent. That was what they did and why
they were there. There were countless
acts of sacrifice and humanity by people who survived inside and some of those
who escaped that will never be known except by those particular people. There were incalculable acts of heroism and
balls; of grit, determination and the fight for life. Acts of selflessness and
grace that only the Lord above bore witness to.
Yes, there was much given on that day and on an its anniversary it is
easy to overlook all that was given to strangers by strangers, to coworkers
from coworkers, from FDNY, PAPD and NYPD to the people and public they
served.
**********
Having
borne witness firsthand, having shouldered the agony and sorrow of loss there
is also the responsibility to honor it but not be hindered by it. Milestones have turned to millstones for
thousands of families across New York City and the metropolitan area as well as
the wider world. There were rites of
passage and celebrations where a parent had been prominently absent. There were graduations and weddings, vows
taken and exchanged without one relative or friend who’d been meant to share
those moments but could not. September
11, 2001. 9/11/01; that date, those
numbers, our memories and thoughts so defined by three simple digits 9 1 1.
Even
though thoughts and memories of that day and the days after are carried deeply
inside each of us in a personal and private way, protected from tampering, and
resistant to fading, this one day every year this is an occasion to gather and
mourn collectively and celebrate the lives of those who we lost.
Sadly,
we remember them as they were that day, when they left home for work, the last
time we saw them. After 18 years having passed,
we have aged but they remain the age they were when they were taken from
us. There are empty photo albums and a
dearth of family portraits and vacations pics.
It took some time for any semblance of normalcy to be returned to our
lives. And among those who serve, The Job
has never been quite the same. It still
retains all its old luster but has been tempered in the flames and fires forged
in our memories of mortality and circumstance.
The
sun will set on this looming September 11th just as it has every
year since that Tuesday the 11th of September in 2001 and with its
setting, night will take over and that day
of recognition, grieving, mourning and commemoration will conclude at midnight
when the 11th bleeds into the 12th. And so, it goes, on and on.
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2019 © All Rights Reserved
Copyright The Brooding Cynyc 2019 © All Rights Reserved
