A Debate Rises: How Much 9/11 Tribute Is Enough?
Again it comes, for the sixth time now ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ 2,191 days after that awful morning ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week. Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers. Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ still? Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying…. “I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”…. Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero. But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.
A bit less than a year ago, She Who Endures My Myriad Eccentricities © and I were at Ground Zero. Though five years had passed since 9.11, walking around the area formerly occupied by the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers was an experience that I will forever struggle to find the words to adequately describe. To look at the hole in the ground, and then look up into the empty sky in an attempt to imagine the size and scale of the Twin Towers was something several magnitudes beyond any frame of reference I might have come up with. Now, almost a year later, I can still remember the experience as if it was yesterday.
I, like many American, can also recall almost every detail about that horrible day six years ago, and yet, as we come up on another anniversary of 9.11, I find myself wondering how much grieving is enough…and who gets to make that decision??
There’s no answer to that question, of course…nor can there be. All of us who lost friends and loved ones on 9.11 have struggled to put that day into some sort of perspective…as futile a task as that seemingly is. Realistically, though, I recognize that time marches inexorably on, and that part of the beauty of the human spirit rests in our collective ability to bounce back. Unfortunately, we don’t all bounce back at the same speed.
As the ragged nature of life pushes on, it is natural that the national fixation on an ominous event becomes ruptured and its anniversary starts to wear out. Once-indelible dates no longer even incite curiosity. On Feb. 15, how many turn backward to the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898?
Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).
Generations, of course, turn over. Few are alive anymore who can recall June 15, 1904, when 1,021 people died in the burning of the steamer General Slocum, the deadliest New York City disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Also, the weight of new wrenching events crowds the national memory. Already since Sept. 11, there have been Katrina and Virginia Tech. And people have their own more circumscribed agonies.
As a Buddhist, I live with the knowledge and the conviction that life is suffering. Loss, death, tragedy, pain, grief- these are all part and parcel of the human experience. Without them, we would neither know nor understand joy and happiness. Knowing this doesn’t make the suffering any more bearable, but it does provide us with the perspective with which we can appreciate joy and happiness. Yes, at some point life must move on- harsh as that may seem.
Of course, getting to where we reach a place that lets us know that moving on is a viable option is a process that’s as indivualized as we are human. We all go through the grieving process differently and at different rates of speed. That’s what makes this process so terribly challenging. Some people are beyond ready to move on, while others most assuredly are not.
For the first time this year at ground zero, the main ceremony will not be at the trade center site. Because of construction, the families will be allowed to pass onto the ground only momentarily, but the ceremony will be shifted to nearby Zuccotti Park, at Broadway and Liberty Street — its moving on somewhat of a metaphor for the feelings of those who favor change.
Sept. 11, of course, remains complicated by its unfinished contours — continuing worry over terrorism, the war in Iraq, a presidential race in which candidates repeatedly invoke the day and its portents. Episodes like the fire at the vacant Deutsche Bank building stir up haunting memories. Books rooted in the attack continue to arrive.
Some people are troubled by what they see as others’ taking advantage of the event. “Six years later, we can see that a lot of people have used 9/11 for some gain,” said Matt Brosseau, 27, of Westfield, N.J. He sees the public tributes as “crassly corporatized and co-opted by false patriots.”
“Me personally, I wouldn’t involve myself in a public commemoration,” he said. “I don’t see the need for an official remembrance from the city or anyone else. In six years, is Minneapolis going to pay for something for the people who died in the bridge collapse?”
Given the scope and the breadth of the tragedy and the suffering that 9.11 inflicted upon all of us, it seems to me that the humane and kind thing to do would be to ensure that those who still need to grieve are allowed to do so and are provided with an appropriate venue. For most of us, this 9.11 and each successive one finds the sharp knife edge of pain becoming less sharp. Those who still need to grieve, however, should be allowed to do so. The challenge, I suppose, is in trying to get a city and a country moving forward toward the future when some simply aren’t yet ready to take those steps.
How much grieving is enough?? I wish I knew….
