HOW could we forget...
But WAIT, there's more.
I live near an airport. Planes always sound different flying overhead on 9/11. Any other day I like to think about people heading off to visit loved ones, or some exciting vacation, wishing it was me. Not today. The engines carry an echo of doom. Happens every year since. The sweep of sadness over so much loss. Of people, to our sense of freedom and security as a country. We are touchable. Such a shock! Everything changed.
I think about my son’s generation. I picked him up form Montessori that morning right after the planes crashed. He was 6, and will never know the collective lightness we felt prior to that day. It goes WAY deeper than the frustrations at TSA checkpoints. It’s foundational transformation. Post 9/11 is the world he grew up in. A new generation was born.
My TV still sits on the same wall. I feel its remembrance. I see myself still glued to the horror that day. My cousin Jerry came over. We wept for hours. The light in the room is always the same today. Bright, with the weight of darkness.
So much loss. I cannot imagine what the families of victims go through everyday, and in particular on the anniversary. The ‘if onlys’ playing out. If only they were late for their flight. If only they had not gone to work that day. If only I had hugged them harder before they left. If only I had said “I love you” and not just bye. Heart pang.
We will never forget!
Which brings me to a thought I had today. Not the first time I’ve thought about this. But it won’t stop spinning in my brain today. And maybe today isn’t the day to write about it, but here I go.
In 2020 alone we lost 350,000 loved ones to Covid 19. Exactly 6,914,377 people worldwide to this day. Astounding!! Tragic!! Where is the remembrance? We have yet to grieve this loss. I believe we all have some level of undiagnosed PTSD from this. That’s a whole other piece.We’ve gone through something catastrophic, and have no pictures. There’s no landmark for the loss. No towers. No gas chambers. No monuments. No remembrance. Just moving on. In our country where “never forget” is a drumbeat, drives us to that place of remembrance, helps our shared loss and healing…did we forget? There’s more! SO many more to remember.
I think we need something to help us grieve this. Collectively. I know that Covid is a divisive topic, but maybe there is a chance through grief recognition, through LOSS of loved ones, we could heal. I hope that there is, sooner than later, a date and memorial for this tragedy. A day where people can post pictures of loved ones who succumbed to the virus. To heal. We can see on 9/11 how necessary it is. People need it. Remembering is how we work through our grief and promote healing. In my humble opinion, we all need it.
If I have offended anyone by drawing attention away from the remembrance of the day, I apologize. None of this is to take away from the 9/11 tragedy. My brain just put the two together this morning, and I decided to write about it.
Time for breakfast. How lucky am I? I am here to enjoy my eggs and toast. To sit with big Walter by my side. To be annoyed at the leaf blower outside my window right now. Life is precious. Oh shit, there’s another plane flying over. Heavy…
Savor the good moments. Savor your people. Say I love you all the time. And of course, never forget. XOMO
Dear Mo,
Six weeks before 9/11 I moved to NYC and stayed for the next 11 years. The biggest comfort in being there was that I could walk down the street at any time, see for myself what was going on (rather than getting the regurgitated, 24 hour news cycle version of events) and process with my fellow New Yorkers the grief we were experiencing.
For the longest time, it felt like the rubble would always be there, the bodies would never be recovered, the healing would never begin. As slow as the process was, the end goal was always clear, because it was constantly in front of us. And for the longest time, it was all we could see... until the last of the last truck of wreckage was removed. It was a solemn, but definitive day.
I suspect that part of the reason we need something to help us grieve COVID is because the end goal is only as visible as what's immediately in front of us, and even that isn't a consistent, tangible thing. For some of us, it's a negative result after three weeks of testing positive, for others, it's the spike in the number of patients we see in our clinics, or the number of people masking up at the grocery store.
What's more, the depth of our struggles are defined by the degree of our privilege and entitlement, as demonstrated in the 2020 Christmas letter I received from a person who complained that her annual trip to the Bahamas was marred by having to buy $25,000 travel insurance (so they could "find their own way home" on a private flight) lest someone in her family contracted COVID on their vacation. (But not a word about the consequences for the countless Nassau residents and flight crew who'd be infected as a result of such holidayus interruptus.)
After the WTC attacks, it drove me crazy when I'd see bumperstickers boldly proclaiming "United We Stand" because we'd forgotten the whole point of the adage: "Divided We Fall." It's almost is if COVID is the sequel meant to teach us that lesson. (And don't even get me started about the delusion that things must "return to normal"...)
We're not just suffering PTSD and grieving unimaginable loss. We're in a state of total disconnect.
And part of why these feelings might seem insurmountable is because -- unlike the rubble in Lower Manhattan -- this global pandemic doesn't have a visible metric of its progress.
I wish I could offer a solution for how we can collectively grieve, or share a concrete answer about
what healing will eventually look like. Instead, I'm sending you, Walter (oh please, for the love of all things comedy, let him be a real-life farting dog!!) and your readers a great big hug and hold you all in my heart. I hope you can feel my love bursting through your computer screens.
Your pal,
Erin
Thank you, Mo! <3 <3 <3