A solemn day, old wounds and hurt that won’t stop
NEW YORK—In time, there will be nobody left to remember. Not as lived memory.
The tragedy of Sept. 11 will be revisited only in history books and news archives. The descendants of the dead won’t gather around twin pools in the footprints of vanished twin towers, clutching roses, wearing blue ribbons on their hearts. Carrying photos of loved ones, wearing their images on commemorative buttons, weeping into the void of endless grief.
And this sacred acre in Lower Manhattan, which feels so alien in its transformation from apocalyptic landscape to gleaming modern structures, will just blend into the surroundings.
The laughter of children won’t recall the laughter of lost parents, the faces of grandchildren won’t evoke the faces of lost grandparents. As so many said and said and said on Saturday: I see your face in our daughter, I hear your voice in our grandson, I glimpse your funny little mannerisms in our now grown child. You would be so proud of the adults they have become.
“Thank you for my life, my name and everything in between,” from a 19-yearold girl who hadn’t been born yet when her father perished. “I will live your legacy.”
The hurting will stop.
But not yet.
And maybe a solemn annual observance needn’t be an occasion of inward agonizing for a nation, a pretext to enumerate the failings of a country, the disputed decisions made by its leaders, two wars in distant battlefields.
But not yet.
“Not a day goes by that we don’t think of you. We miss your laughter, your joy, the love you brought to our family.”
Not on Sept. 11, 2021, which ripped open the scab on old wounds.
The 20th anniversary of the attacks was both remembrance ceremony and litany of sorrow. With three presidents in attendance — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton. Their eminent presence, though, was properly subdued, eclipsed by families of the slaughtered. A grim reunion.
The president who was not there, Donald Trump, at one time among the most famous of New York City residents, was scheduled to provide ringside commentary at a prize fight in Hollywood, Fla., on Saturday night. He never misses an opportunity to do the wrong thing.
In the shadow of One World Trade Center, a sad cello played, the strings of violins, the tootle of a flute and, finally, “The Last Post” on a bugle. Bruce Springsteen offering “I’ll See You in My Dreams” as a musical eulogy; Broadway performer Kelli O’Hara piercing the quiet with a stirring rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
A bell rung into the moments of silence six times: once for each tower of the World Trade Center when it was struck by al-Qaida-hijacked planes, al-Qaida suicide pilots in the cockpit — the north tower at 8:46 a.m., the south tower at 9:03 — once for when each tower fell, once for the attack at the Pentagon, once for Flight 93 that crashed into a Pennsylvania field in Shanksville, because courageous passengers took their doomed fate into their own hands, sparing the countless lives of others.
“No one knows the heartache that hides behind our smiles. Nobody knows the many times we’ve cried.”
From the young niece of a firefighter: “Even though I never met you in person, I miss you a lot. Mom always tells me all the crazy fun things you do and, if you were still here, I’d probably be doing them with you.” She thanked him for being her “guardian angel” and finished by revealing she wanted to follow in the family profession.
“You, Pop-Pop and Dad have inspired me to follow in your footsteps and be a firefighter, too.”
A widow who was eight months pregnant when she lost her husband at Cantor Fitzgerald, choking back tears. “Joe, we love and miss you more than you can ever imagine. Our son is the spitting image of you. He lights up my world every day. I see you in everything that he does. And I know that you see us, because I feel you continue to watch over us and your family.
“Twenty years feels like an eternity … it still feels like yesterday. Until we meet again, my love …”
A father, Mike Law, paying tribute to a daughter, Sarah, who was a flight attendant on one of those planes. It felt like “evil” had descended on the world, he said. “But it was also a time when people acted above and beyond the ordinary.”
Across four hours on Saturday, on the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, at what was once called Ground Zero, the names of the dead were recited at the pace of a funeral dirge.
There was no such commemoration a year ago because of the pandemic. One wonders how long this ritual will continue. Twenty years after might be a watershed moment and the bereaved might have no further use for publicly exposing their heartbreak.
Some 40 per cent of Sept. 11 victims have never been identified by remains. Nothing to bury. Yet that forensic work continues. Just this past week, increasingly sophisticated technology allowed two victims to be identified from scraps. One was a female insurance employee.
Reader after reader gave tribute to the first responders who tried so valiantly to save the living and salvage the dead, hundreds of firefighters and police officers sacrificed in the largely futile cause. And forget not the thousands of troops who would be killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, combat that was the direct result of the attacks in the “war on terror” proclaimed by President George W. Bush.
In awful symmetry, the anniversary comes less than a fortnight after the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan and America’s shamefully chaotic withdrawal. While the threat of terrorism these days emanates from domestic groups, white supremacists and militias.
Bush, speaking at Shanksville, offered possibly the most resonating of words, lamenting today’s deep divisions of politics and ideology, a dark place where hate festers. In stark contrast to the wounds that bound two decades ago.
“When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. Malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together.”
He warned of jeopardy from menace. “We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home … they are children of the same foul spirit and it is our continuing duty to confront them.”
Following the ceremony in New York, the families were invited into One World Trade Center, taken to the observatory of what is now the tallest building in the U.S. at 1,776 feet. It is just as much symbol of American resilience as modern architecture.
Across the city, there were other tributes and commemorations: at every firehall, at the Met, where Verdi’s “Requiem” was performed; at Green Wood Cemetery, the top of Battle Hill, highest point in Brooklyn and setting of the largest Revolutionary War battle, with a commanding view of the Statue of Liberty.
America is replete with symbols, as the Twin Towers once were, of U.S. brash might and presumed invulnerability.
At sunset Saturday, 88 7,000-watt lights would reach four miles into the sky from Battery Park, projecting a hologram — a ghost — of the Towers.
An outsider, a stranger in a strange land most keenly on this of all days, can only wish America will one day be free from the haunting of Sept. 11.
But not yet.