How are the firemen who walked out of the burning rubble coping? What about the people who made it down the stairwell and out into the open air and safety? Yes, there should be images of that day shown, perhaps a short montage just to jar our memories and wake whatever fight that was in our souls that has since gone to sleep.
I want to remember. I never want to lose that memory of the smoky sky above Manhattan that I viewed from my office window. I want to remember Pete Ganci's wake and the sharpshooters atop my neighbor's house during the memorial service for Claude Richards, I want to remember the haunted look in my firefighter cousin's eyes and the look of despair on my father's face. I want to remember the chilling feeling of looking at a sky free of jumbo jets for days on end and the quiet, the unnerving quiet, that made those days after so surreal and chilling. I need to remember these things because to forget would be to spit in the face of every single person who died that day.
Relive those events, if only for a moment. There are a million places to look in case you have forgotten, in case you turn on your television on September 11, 2003, hoping for something to help you remember that day, to live through it again just to not forget.
We cannot move on because we are still there. There are 12,000 body parts yet to be identified. There are people still in mourning, people who will never, ever get over seeing their loved one's name on this list. There are still people who want us dead, animals who would stop at nothing to see that the events of 9/11 are repeated, maybe somewhere else. Maybe your own backyard this time.
What does it say about our country when the protesters and conspiracy theorists will mark the day with more of an effort than the mainstream media is? When activists who want to put salt in our wounds and rip open our scars are commemorating that day (albeit in a disgusting way) more than our own media, who will be continuing on with soap operas and Jerry Springer as if this was just another day?
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Thanks Michele, very powerful and important. I think your tone and emphasis are about exactly right. "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over" and for all the reasons you mentioned, it isn't over.
2 - Al Barger
Very well written, Michele.
I might suggest another way of looking at the 9/11 anniversary, though. We shouldn't forget- indeed, I'd like to have a DVD with all the strongest graphic footage, particularly the people jumping from the towers. That's the most horrifying video I've ever seen, and it might be good to steel people's nerves, and keep these images in mind when they are hearing about our continuing war casualties.
However, it might also be seen as a sign of our strength that we're not continuing to dwell on it obsessively. The economy is rebounding, and people are mostly just going about business- which now unfortunately now has to include knocking down a couple of nasty dictatorships.
We are not that traumatized, that terrorized. They hit us with their best, and two years later it's not that big a deal to us. We continue to knock down terrorists and their supporters, but otherwise are largely unaffected.