For the past six years, around the middle of July I always experience a jerk of realization that the middle of September is just two months away. By the time Labor Day weekend rolls around, a heaviness begins to descend. The anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is always difficult, but this year it carried an added symbolic element: For the first time since 2001, the date fell on a Tuesday.
I work two blocks from the World Trade Center site, and my community doesn't need an anniversary to remind us of the suffering wrought by the Twin Towers'destruction. It remains a daily part of our lives, and a continuing source of pain and anxiety. Six years after an avalanche of toxic debris blanketed the neighborhood, a number of our workers and residents struggle with physical and psychological disorders. Many of our small businesses continue to face economic hardship. And just last month, a fire in a building damaged in the attacks and currently undergoing demolition killed two firefighters and rekindled a host of fears and bad memories.
But life does go on, and people go about their daily routines in much the same way they did six years ago—residents walk their kids to school in the morning, office workers crowd the streets at noon, tourists swarm the numerous gift shops all summer long. Aside from the obvious scar where the Twin Towers should be, the effects of 9/11 on the neighborhood are largely hidden from view. Neighbors are more likely to carry their wounds privately than wear them on their sleeves for all to see.
For the past few years, I have felt a nagging fear that much of the world regards September 11 to be in the past, a matter more of history than of current events. More and more, I hear frustrated calls for people to "move on," as if grief could be expected to adhere to a timetable. Here in New York, controversy over the plans for this year's 9/11 ceremony prompted such calls from people who failed to understand not only that each person requires his or her own amount of time to recover from loss, but that the very concept of "moving on" means different things to different people.
For some, "moving on" means leaving 9/11 behind altogether, an impossible task for thousands of individuals close to the attacks. The grieving relative of a victim will always miss the person he lost; the injured survivor whose body was permanently disfigured is reminded every time she looks in the mirror. The police officer who searched the pile for human remains and as a result suffers from respiratory problems may never be free of his symptoms, and the neighborhoods closest to the WTC will never be quite what they were. For those of us whose lives have been altered by the attacks, September 11 is an ongoing reality; and our task is not to get over it, but to learn to live with it.
I understand that for most people, 9/11 doesn't hold the same personal urgency that it holds for us in Lower Manhattan. I don't begrudge people their own ability to move on. But I believe it remains imperative that as each summer draws to a close, we continue to pause in remembrance of a day that forever changed countless lives; because the ideology of hate that spawned the attacks continues to pose a threat. Because, despite our wishes to the contrary, 9/11 is not over, as many survivors exposed to the toxins released when the towers collapsed now battle life-threatening illnesses like emphysema and lung cancer. Because for one fleeting moment, our country was united in an extraordinary way that assures us of the good we're capable of when faced with the worst of circumstances.
But perhaps the most important reason to remember is also the most basic. We must remember for the same reason that ceremonies of remembrance continue to be held on December 7 in Oahu, April 19 in Oklahoma City and August 29 in communities all along the Gulf Coast.
When something of such a magnitude occurs, decency requires us to remember the human toll, to look beyond the political ramifications and see the lives behind the headlines. The murders of the dead and the suffering of the survivors are too great for any one person to comprehend. Only through our collective memory can we insure that the enormity of 9/11 is never forgotten.
Feeds