You just can’t avoid all the TV shows, and newspaper articles about 9-11 today and leading up to today, the tenth anniversary of the worst attack ever on American soil: Nor should you. Thousands of victims and hundreds of heroes died that day. Uncounted others risked their lives, and/or their health in the days and months afterward removing the rubble from the wrecked World Trade Center. That’s not even counting all the US military men, and women killed, and wounded in subsequent action against Iraq, and Afghanistan, and we should count them.
I’m going to raise an issue that I haven’t seen raised before. It appears to me, based on the reporting I’ve seen, some of the ceremonies surrounding the annual commemoration of 9-11 are keeping the early stages of mourning alive in some of the survivors of those killed. In other words, I suspect that some of the remembrances have kept people from getting to the point where life can go on instead of helping them to reach that point.
I hope I’m wrong and if I’m right, I don’t know what to do about it. We should remember the heinous attack. We should honor the heroes. I just don’t know how to move the ceremonies more toward remembering, and more away from mourning, but after ten years, I suggest that people smarter than I am ought to be thinking about how to do that if they aren’t already doing so.
I’ll be participating in one of the ceremonies today, a small one at a local church. I’ve had no part in planning the ceremony, so don’t know whether it leans toward remembrance or mourning. We all need to concentrate on the bad things about our enemies who did these awful things. We also need to concentrate on the good things we remember about those who are gone. Nobody should try to get over their deaths, we should never forget. But in addition to remembering, we should do whatever we can to help the living get on with living.
In the days to come, as well as remembering 9-11, it would be a very good thing if we could remember and even recapture the spirit of national unity that filled the country on 9-12-2001, and for a long time afterward.
