The Healing Field

There is a special 9/11 memorial here in town. One of the cemeteries on the north side of town has planted 3000 American flags in tribute to those who lost their lives 5 years ago. I decided to go. Actually, I felt compelled to go. Maybe it’s part of our society, but it seems completely appropriate to acknowledge a 5-year milestone. For the last 5 years, I cannot tell you what I have done on September 11, other than to wish a friend of mine a happy birthday. Kind of hard to forget that one, you know?

I attend memorials with a sense of curiosity and reverence. Washington DC is obviously the best example I can come up with in terms of comparisons. I have walked the walk and seen the various memorials and museums. The Holocaust museum was especially difficult to go through, as one would expect. I will say that for as solemn as these memorials and museums are and for as somber as they make me feel, I still find that I am a bit detached. I realize it is due to my age and the fact that I have no real connection to these past events. Even with older members of my family, we seem to have come through History remarkably unscathed. Perhaps then this is one reason why I struggle so much with the events of that day and especially with watching the Twin Towers. I have no frame of reference, no family member who experienced another horrific event that I can turn to and ask,” How did you cope?”

The events of September are (for me) the defining event for my generation thus far. Others may not agree and I certainly don’t belittle any of the military actions taken for the past 35 years or mean to imply that they somehow pale in comparison. A life taken is a life taken. Perhaps it is another product of my upbringing, but to watch a War on TV with landscapes I don’t recognize has a way of desensitizing the experience. How long has it been since a war was brought to our own soil? I don’t assume I am alone in hoping that 9/11 is as bad as it will ever get. And yet, I think we all know better. We somehow manage to find new ways to hurt each other. And now, five years after the fact, the documentaries and tributes that began as a trickle have moved out of the TV documentary stage and onto the big screens. Another product of our times, I suppose. First you report it, then you try to digest it with added "expert" commentary and public reaction (with plenty of finger pointing), then research and theorize in an attempt to understand the nature of it (and find a place to catalog it), and finally re-create it in your own image with your own message. It’s like a media based group therapy session and we are all going through the stages of grief together.

One memorial I have not gone to, nor do I plan on seeing any time soon is Ground Zero. I watched a special on TV this week about the Ironworkers in New York that came in after 9/11 to clear the site. It was agonizing for me just to watch it and to hear them speak about it. They showed the footage of the towers being hit and subsequently collapsing and it was as if I experienced it all over again. It’s been 5 years, but for me it’s still too soon. Will it always feel like this?

There are so many parts of that day that I struggle with when I think about it. I knew people in the towers. (They all made it out.) I worked there myself on a project just the previous year and stayed in that Marriott. I went down into the Mall in the afternoons to get ice cream. I still have my badge from the buildings. The cover for it has a picture of the towers and it says simply, World Trade Center. One thing I never managed to do was go to the top. I always talked about it but never made it. I’m sure all of that plus a million other things were swirling through my mind when I first heard the news that morning. By the time I was in front of a TV, both towers were burning. It seemed very strange and surreal to be in the basement workout area of my office building, sitting on a piece of gym equipment, and watching TV with my co-workers, most of whom were crying already. The shock and almost disbelief of what I was seeing as I watched them fall was my undoing.

Strangely enough, it wasn’t until later that day after I, as well as everyone else at work, was sent home and was sitting on my couch watching the news coverage and systematically going through an entire box of Kleenex that my mind finally grasped the fact that I had literally watched thousands of people die. It would be awhile before we would get a final body count between New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, but I couldn’t get out of my head the fact that I sat on a God Damn rowing machine passively watching the most horrific thing I have ever seen. I was filled with a sense of horror and rage made worse by the fact that I also felt so helpless. Is this survivor’s guilt, maybe? I don’t know.

What I do know is that I had another raging headache; similar to the ones I had been getting almost daily for the previous month. A week later I would be admitted to the hospital for the first of several trips that Fall. Totally unrelated of course, but it is hard to think of one trauma without the other. In a way it offered me an escape from what was going on. I would only hear or see small pieces of the news for the next 6 weeks. By then, it was supposed to be back to business as usual. We were putting on our brave faces for the world and getting ready to retaliate. And on and on it goes…

The memorial is called the Healing Field. I’m choosing to think of it as not simply a title, but a wish and a prayer.

Seeing it in person was powerful. The rows of flags were grouped by flight number or location (Pentagon and WTC) alphabetically. At first I just walked along the outside, for some reason hesitant to walk through them. Eventually, I did walk through them. As you can see from the picture, there was a breeze blowing. It was gorgeous. The flags are spaced close enough that as you walk through, you can’t help but have them touch you. It was an odd feeling at first, but strangely comforting after a while. As I wandered a bit, I gave in to the urge to just sit among them. And then lay down.

As I walked through, I realized that attached to each flag was a laminated card with a name and small paragraph about the life that was taken. As I looked at the names, I decided to look for those people lost in the towers that shared my name. Is that strange? I don’t know if I fully understand yet why I did it. Maybe I just needed a name, maybe I needed to see my name and reaffirm my feelings of guilt and relief that it wasn’t me. I found 4: Claude, Gregory, Michael and Venesha. Four people who were strangers to me yet shared my family name. And then, once I had given the hard knot in my chest an identity, I wept for them and for all the others.