One thing I learned while grieving the deaths of people I loved is that it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when a shift occurs: when the gigantic loss that has shadowed at least some part of each day becomes another part of my emotional landscape. The loss becomes so familiar that I no longer note it unless something occurs to draw my attention back to it. An image. A few words. A question. A dream.
An anniversary.
I think it took about three years before I stopped consciously mourning September 11, 2001, every day. Even though I’d longed for that change, I didn’t realize when it happened. But at some point, I recognized that it had happened by a sudden awareness of its absence.
Mourning is ongoing, but it is not constant.
For the last few months, I’ve immersed myself in the events of September 11, 2001, again. I’ve read hundreds of blogs. Looked at thousands of photos. Watched videos. Researched federal, state, city, and school district documents. Read as many interviews as I could bear with first responders, survivors, employees–and with the families and friends of people who died that day. I did this hoping that it would make me write more authentic fiction.
It was all a reminder that scar tissue isn’t the same as healing. Scar tissue means an injury has been dealt with, but it left damage. However, even with scar tissue, the body still functions.
And even in grief, every day offers gifts of laughter, friendship, love, art, dogs, nature…
One of my resources has been Aftermath by Joel Meyerowitz. Meyerowitz overcame a lot of frustrating obstacles to make a photographic record of the recovery efforts in Lower Manhattan because he thought it was important to capture history. The book consists mostly of the pictures he shot, but the limited text is powerful. Here’s an account of a day at the World Trade Center recovery site:
One afternoon, when I was late coming downtown, I was greeted excitedly by several members of the Arson and Explosion Squad as I walked onto the pile. “Oh, Joel, you missed an amazing sight today,” one of them exclaimed. “We were on our knees, digging in the smoke, when all of a sudden we were surrounded by Monarch butterflies–swarms of them flitting around us, tapping on our helmets in the smoke. One of the guys stood up and said, ‘Souls.’ “
You are all remembered.