It seems that everyone is writing about their memories of September 11, 2001 everywhere. Newspapers were filled with reporters remembrances of where they were and what they were doing on that fateful day. Facebook and Twitter were filled with statuses (stati?) talking about each individual's experiences on that day. Online sites listed members posts about loved ones touched by that day.
So, I thought I would share my own memories. However, as I sat down to think about this, I discovered that really, my experiences were not that different than most people's that day. I heard about the attacks, went back to my office and spent the day watching in horror as the events unfolded, went home and drank a lot. That's more or less what most Americans did that day -- at least those who were not touched directly by the attacks by either being present at one of the sites attacked that day or by losing loved ones in the attacks.
But what I didn't see many people talking about was the odd emotions that swept through the remainder of that week and in the months following the attacks. That is what I wanted to write about here.
Like many Americans my first reaction to the attacks was one of rage. Anger gripped me almost immediately and the feeling was that we had to strike back at those who did this immediately and overwhelmingly. As was the case everywhere, this anger mixed with a newly found Nationalism that fueled an unacceptable level of nonchalance toward U.S. government abuses over the next several years. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
After the anger subsided somewhat, what overcame me was an unbelievable feeling of sadness. The picture on every channel was of the newly christened "Ground Zero". Death, destruction and mourning was all that one saw everywhere. How soon we forget the countless fliers with pictures of missing friends or relatives that were hung all around Manhattan hoping beyond hope that someone would come and say that the person on the flyer was found alive. But those calls never came.
What was even odder was the fact that we had to go on with our lives as normal. We got up on September 12 and went to work and tried as best we could to go about our business. But, how were we supposed to act? Do we act as if nothing happened? Do we walk around as if in mourning? Is it ok to laugh?
A couple of days after, I went to a previously scheduled wine pairing dinner at a local restaurant. The featured speaker from the winery was not able to attend due to being stuck in Chicago and having all commercial air traffic still grounded. I was there with a number of local businesspeople, attorneys, doctors and judges. I swear to God, nobody knew what to do. The typical banter and small talk that I am always uncomfortable with anyway was missing from this particular evening. Even though every American had this new shared experience, it was like we had forgotten how to communicate comfortably. It was as if we were students on the first day of grammar school, uneasily approaching each other, waiting for the other to break the ice. Eventually, conversation commenced with the usual insincere politeness, but still this had to be one of the oddest experiences of my life.
Young people might not yet really understand this, but September 11, 2001 was pre-Facebook. There were some social network-like sites out there, but generally this type of instant communication and shared openness about everything in your life was not the norm back then. I mention this because I experienced for the first time the potential of such new media in the days and weeks following 9/11. Leo, a firefighter with the FDNY and I person I knew only from the Black 47 message board, was not on duty that Tuesday morning. However, he had been called to the scene shortly after and was participating in the clean-up and rescue operations following that awful day. Cell phone service was down in New York, as were land lines in lower Manhattan. There were no smart phones then, at least as we knew them. People generally did not text each other (why would you type on a phone when you can just call the person?). After countless hours at Ground Zero with the stench of death surrounding him, breathing in noxious smoke and debris, Leo was able to get to a working online computer. The only way he could think to let everyone know he was ok was to post it on the Black 47 message board. Seeing this, other fans of the band got in touch with his family to let them know that he was ok and would be in touch as soon as he could. It was pretty incredible to play a tangential role in this experience and it forecast the amazing power of social media that would go on to within less than a decade help organize revolution across the globe.
Leo went on to post more on that message board. He gave a gripping account of what he was experiencing as he and his fellow firefighters dug through the remains of the World Trade Center. He wrote with heartbreaking detail the sights, sounds and emotions that surrounded him as he searched in vain for his fellow firefighters. He wrote what it was like to attend so many funerals in such a short period of time, each one for someone with whom he was friends and for whom he would give his life without hesitation, and how the sound of the bagpipe, which he had enjoyed in celebration his entire life, was now a sound he dreaded hearing. He encouraged those in the NYC area to attend the funerals since there were not enough firefighters to show up en masse as the practice for a firefighters' funeral, especially one who died in the line of duty.
What was coming through most in these posts was an overwhelming fatigue. It was a fatigue which many of us felt in the weeks following 9/11. Although we weren't literally sifting through human remains as were the teams at Ground Zero, we were dealing with what were almost unthinkable attacks and the unfamiliar emotions that they wrought. It was as if we were all in a daze.
About three weeks after the attacks, my ex-wife and I were planning to attend a Black 47 concert in Baltimore. We had plane reservations and were staying with her friends in the area. Obviously following the attacks, our plane reservations didn't make it through. Although air service was back in place, flights were so overloaded and routes so limited, that our flight was canceled. We drove to Baltimore and got ready for the show. At the outset, it was very much like the dinner I attended a few days after the attacks. There was a sense of uneasiness still among the crowd. We enjoyed the opening act -- O'Malley's March, led by then-Mayor of Baltimore (now Governor of Maryland) Martin O'Malley. Black 47 took the stage probably around 11 or so. The experience was quite frankly cathartic. This mix of Irish immigrants and native New Yorkers put out such positive electrifying pure emotion that it finally gave me the excuse to let loose and simply celebrate life. The lead singer Larry Kirwan had watched the sad events of 9/11 transpire in person from the roof of his apartment in The Bronx. He saw victims jump from the towers in one last desperate attempt to escape the flames, or perhaps one last act of defiance against those who sought to take their life against their will. The band lost many fans and friends in the towers' collapse, notable amongst them Father Mychal Judge, whose death certificate was numbered the first among those killed on that awful day. But despite their first hand experiences and their immediate losses on that day, they gave us permission to live again and to go on with our lives, perhaps with a new appreciation of everything we had.
In the years since, there have been many reasons to celebrate and to mourn. I have seen illness, addiction, divorce, death, depression, eventually though leading to healing, spiritual rebirth, love, marriage and the birth of my daughter who has given me an entirely new view of life and more reasons to smile every day than I probably had cumulatively in my life prior to her birth. Three years after the events of September 11, 2001, a close friend of my wife (then my newly engaged fiancee) gave birth to a son. Although they had hoped that the child would not be born on such a day of loss and mourning, it was in a way the greatest example of the healing and rebirth that I and hopefully the country as a whole had experienced -- that this would now be a day of celebration of new life and of the possibilities brought about by the best in humanity rather than a remembrance of what the worst in humanity can bring. That is how I choose to remember 9/11 and to live my life, celebrating whenever I can and doing my best to overlook all who would try to bring me down.
No comments:
Post a Comment