The importance of things

Well, I just accidentally watched a PBS program having to do with 9/11. I don't normally watch T.V. during the daytime -- makes me feel guilty, as in: you should be getting things accomplished -- but I switched on the television when the tedious task of putting photos in an album began to pall. The program that was just starting was called Objects and Memory, and it turned out to be not so much about the terrible events of that day, as the importance of objects, things in connecting people to those who died.

I cried several times during the program. As for example when the woman was talking about how a newsman had gone to Ground Zero, and saw some of the thousands of pieces of paper that filled the air that day, adhering to the grill of an emergency vehicle. He gathered a few of them up. One of them was the personnel review of the woman's husband, who had worked in one of the Twin Towers. The newsman tracked the woman down, and gave her that piece of paper that had her husband's signature on it, that he had held, touched. And it meant the world to her.

I understood exactly how she felt, how the others felt who spoke along similar lines, when similar "miracles" brought them some little something connected to their lost loved one, months, in one case even a couple of years, after 9/11. I said this a long time ago in one of my newsletters, when I was waxing rapturous about some ancient stone wall or other that I'd encountered in my travels: things make the past real to us. And it doesn't really matter what the item is, how insignificant. What is important is that it was there. As they said on this program, physical things forge a bridge between us and the past, a bridge that is stronger than just our memory of the past; indeed, they reinforce our memories.

I still have a couple of old shirts of my husband Micheal's, a Japanese-style robe I gave him at some point, one of his old hats, the velvet drawing of a dragon that a friend had given him for his last birthday, that he was busy coloring with colored pencils up until the day of his death (and which I finished after he died)...all of these things have meaning for me because they were his, touched him, were touched by him. They connect me to him.

The one time I felt a real pang during the massive "garage" sale (it actually ended up being a whole house sale) that I had four months after Micheal's death, was when I saw someone carrying the little drop-front desk he had had since he was a boy, out of the house to the "cashier" (my mother) on the front lawn. The desk had been cheaply made, and was not in very good shape, but I knew it had meant a lot to Micheal, because it connected him to his past, his youth. So in a way I was saying good-by to two connections to the past: mine to Micheal, and Micheal's to his youth. There were good, practical reasons for including the desk with all the other things being sold, but I still feel a small regret that I did not hang onto it, as I did to the hat, the shirts, the robe.

There was another aspect of the importance of things examined by the PBS program (which was really very well-done). Everywhere that New Yorkers set up impromptu memorials to the fallen, in the days following 9/11, people brought things and left them. Flowers, flags, teddy bears, poems, pictures drawn by children. The same thing happened following the Oklahoma City terrorist attack in 1995: people spontaneously brought things to leave for the people who had died. They did the same thing when Princess Diana died. In such cases the things are not serving as a link between separated loved ones, but as an acknowl-edgment that the missing were here. The message that is being sent: "I may not have known you personally, but I honor the fact of your life with this token." And people feel compelled to do this! This to me is both wonderful, and fascinating. We want, we need, a physical manifestation of how we feel about the death of someone, a physical affirmation that someone cares.

I don't want to go there

O.K., for the past few days everything has been about 9/11, and about how we are approaching the 10th anniversary of same. The television, newspapers, news magazines, the Internet, everywhere you turn, that's the major news. People who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center being interviewed. New Yorkers who were trauma-tized by the events of the day, but ultimately decided to stick it out in New York, rather than fleeing elsewhere, being interviewed. Interviews of American Muslims who feel America has become much more suspicious of them since 9/11 (not surprisingly!), and who wish those suspicious Americans would understand that they (the Muslims) are as appalled by what happened as the rest of America, who wish Americans better understood what Islam is really about.

Am I the only person who would prefer not to be reminded of that terrible day, who would prefer we not have this revisiting and rehashing? Who thinks it would have been wiser to have quiet memorial services, without a lot of leading-up-to brouhaha? Now we're hearing that there is a serious possibility that there will be some kind of terrorist attack, on or around the 11th. Surprise, surprise! What could be a more perfect time to stage another attack, than the 10th anniversary of the original attack? Especially when there are all these big memorial services planned.

I certainly don't need to be reminded of anything I saw that day. I actually came to the events of the day late -- like one in the afternoon, when I was leaving for work at the Gray Public Library here in Maine. Hadn't had the radio or T.V. on during the morning, when I was getting ready for work, so knew nothing until I started the car. The radio came on automatically and a newsman was saying that all commercial flights had been grounded. What?! I listened for a couple of minutes, trying to understand what was hap-pening, then went back inside and turned on the T.V. A picture (that they had undoubtedly been replaying incessantly since 9 o'clock that morning) of a plane flying into one of the World Trade Center buildings was on the screen, and across the bottom was a wide red stripe with the words in white: American under attack. For a couple of minutes I really couldn't take it in, couldn't believe this was real. I was truly befuddled that I was watching an airplane seemingly fly into a building, but I didn't see it fly out. And then I yelled, "Micheal, Micheal, come quick; something terrible's happened!" Micheal worked nights at the time, and was probably in the third stage of sleep by then, but he came stumbling out of the bedroom, stark naked, brought by the urgency in my voice. We both sat on the couch, staring at the television, unable to believe what we were seeing and hearing. And when they showed the South Tower beginning to fall, I was as upset as the ladies on the sidewalk a few blocks away who were watching it happen right before them -- you could hear them crying out Oh, my God, Oh, my God. And that is just what I was thinking.

I finally realized I was going to be late for work, and went to the phone to call the library. I didn't at that time know that all of this had happened over four hours before, so thought I was relaying breaking news. I went on in to work, and worked my regular shift, but that was the beginning of days of seeing those same images over and over again on the T.V. I don't want to see them anymore.