Memories and Memorials

It's September 11.  I live not too far from New York.  It goes without saying I suppose that this day is a sad one for all of us and maybe particularly for those who live or work in those areas of impact where the lingering scars in the landscape and proliferation of memorials from local structures to the larger nationally known monuments at the sites themselves are daily reminders from which we cannot run.

There are those empty spaces in the New York skyline that have yet to cease feeling like a punch in the gut when I get to that spot on the ride into the City and realize anew every time that the missing pieces are gone for good and how they came to be that way--what the significance of their absence means ... the monumental loss.  I'm continually surprised each time I see the new Freedom Tower in the skyline as though my brain can't accept it--how did that get there, it seems to wonder.

So like millions of others I've been remembering all day ... where I was and who I was with.  The collective television watching with the same horrific images repeating over and over.  The local reports of people who made it home, covered in ash, being hosed down at local train stations.  The local people who didn't make it home.  The gamut of emotions that raged over the course of the days that followed but mostly the extreme sadness and then the empty feeling after you just couldn't cry anymore.

After the news cycles eventually returned to normal and the events of September 11 weren't the sum total of the morning and evening broadcasts, those in the greater New York area still heard stories on a daily basis during the long recovery process.  We followed the debris as it made it's way out of the hole and went to stations for sorting.  Years later there were still stories almost daily about the aftermath of illnesses that befell first responders and those who worked in the pit, the reparations and donations.  The New York memorial services are still televised live on the 11th every year.  They still read the names of every person who perished.  If I am able to tune in, I still listen for the names I recognize.

I have other memories that really stand out:  twisted metal on trucks.  It happened more than once during the first years following the attacks.  I'd be on the highway going who-know-where and I'd pass or be passed by a flatbed truck carrying one or two or perhaps three lengths of twisted, rusted metal.  I didn't have to wonder what it was or where it was going.  It just took my breath away each time.  The beams, always lying tied to the trucks, appeared to me to be prostrate in a sort of twisted permanent agony as they traveled to the myriad communities that built memorials to honor the memories of those who died, the service of those who responded and the pain of the families left behind.

I see two such memorials fairly regularly and another almost daily.  There is one in a sports field complex in the town where I work.  Our county memorial is near a building where I sometimes have to attend meetings.  The one I see often--almost daily--sits along the road that I travel from where I live now to the town where I grew up about 10 miles away and where my mom still lives, where I go out to eat, shop, attend church, see doctors, spend much of my life.

Morris Plains, NJ

I don't pass one of these installations without remembering.  I saw landscapers tending to the Morris Plains memorial the other day--the day before the 11th.  I imagined that their chores, performed routinely elsewhere, took on something of the sacred in that small patch of green on that day.

I wonder about the children who play on the soccer fields in Boonton Township where I work.  Most of them weren't born when the planes hit the towers.  How do their parents explain the tall pieces of steel to them?  How can they ever understand?

Do we now even understand ourselves?  I'm pretty sure I don't.

But I'll never forget.