Never Forget…What, Exactly?
It’s 9–11 again, and my Facebook feed is filled with photos of the twin towers, personal recollections about where someone was When The Planes Hit, and especially remonstrances to “never forget”.
I’m one of those old enough to remember exactly where I was when the planes hit — I was in bed, because I worked nights — and to have seen the twin towers in the flesh, so to speak, and I remember the day and the aftermath quite well (though probably not accurately). I haven’t forgotten. Or have I?
Days do go by when I don’t think about that event. Months, even. 9–11 doesn’t form any significant part of my daily consciousness, but it does color my life in ways that are both annoying and depressing. Increased police presence. Increased fear of violence. TSA theater at the airports. Rancor in politics and thunderous pronouncements about “getting the bad guys”. Except…is that what I’m supposed to remember?
The country did, absolutely, decide rather quickly to go after the “bad guys”, but what came first was not revenge, but solidarity. I remember very clearly the assembled members of Congress standing on the steps of the Capitol singing “God Bless America”, Republicans and Democrats alike. I remember the scenes from New York, where everyone found someplace to go — there was no mass refugee exodus from the city. I remember the first responders, for once crossing jurisdictional lines and throwing themselves into the fire to save perhaps one more soul. I remember the tragedy trailing off in scale, a lengthy decrescendo of death, first the towers, then the Pentagon, then a field in Pennsylvania. Then…silence.
And then I remember the people.
I don’t think the demolition of two massive structures, impressive as they were, was particularly tragic. Sad, definitely. Dangerous. Destructive. But the towers are just buildings. The Pentagon, which has become kind of an afterthought in all this remembrance, wasn’t too seriously injured — it is so massive there were people in it that had no idea it had been struck by an airplane. What made the event so heartrending was not that “America had been attacked” but that people, ordinary Joes and Janes like you and me, had been killed.
It happens all the time, of course. Statistically speaking, somewhere around 25% of the people that died on 9–11 would be dead now, anyway. Heart attacks, strokes, cancer. Suicide. But this felt different, and feels different every time I let myself think about it.
As was so eloquently stated in one of the best (and weirdest) Christmas movies of all time, Love Actually, none of the messages from the twin towers that day were angry. None of them were about revenge, or payback. No one — humans can be such beautiful creatures — wasted the last moments of their life spitting out vitriol against what was, at that point, a nameless enemy. No. They said things like, “I’m sorry,” and “I’ll always be there for you,” and “I wish I had said ‘I love you’ one more time.”
Every year on the vigil I am teaching class of one kind or another. And every year I bring up the event, and we look at pictures, and we talk about what happened, and what we can learn from it. The kids I teach do not have any memory of the planes and the smoke and the shock of it all. They were, most of them, not even born. To them, it’s Pearl Harbor, something that was, yes, very terrible and very scary, but it happened a long time ago to people they don’t know or care about.
My remedy for that is not to show pictures of collapsing buildings or heaps of twisted metal. My remedy for that is a slideshow of New York undamaged, and pictures of the people, and a song, a song I always play, ever since I heard it for the first time. It’s called “I’ll Be Here,” and my favorite version is sung by the impossibly perfect Audra McDonald. And I cry. I’m crying just thinking about it.
My students often cry, too. Because now they remember.
No, they don’t remember anyone that died that day, but they remember what it feels like when someone dies — most have been through something like that — and if not, they remember what it feels like to be terrified that someone they love will not come back to them. That they can clearly remember.
Then we talk about how to make sure that when it happens — because it surely, inevitably will — they’ve wasted none of their time on fighting and cutting words, none of it on belittling or bullying. None of it on negativity. Do not, I tell them, have your last interaction with anyone be less than the best you have to give. And you know what? You don’t know when you’ll have that last interaction. You never know. One day will be the last day. Make that day worth a song.
That is what I think I must never forget. Not that there are implacable enemies out there. Not that we should be wrapping ourselves in the bubble-sheets of armies and navies and police and “Homeland Security”, as if those things will stop any of us from dying, when the day comes. Not even that we might want to appreciate the rain, or the sunshine, or whatever the day brings us, though we surely everyday should, in case there isn’t another one.
Instead, I want to remember that we are all on a trip that ends abruptly, a train that stops, often without warning. And that person, in the seat next to us, deserves to be treated with all the love and kindness we have in us, because it might be — and one day it will be — the last thing we ever do.
If I don’t remember the towers and the planes and New York and Washington every day, and I confess I don’t, at least I remember that.
It’s a thing we really should never forget.
