In a couple of gripping pieces about the horror and continuing grief experienced by 9/11 survivors and about the recent “blather on television by various women and men about keeping the ’sanctity’ of the 9-11 bomb site,” Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, referring to all the “trout-pout commentators [who] hog the discourse” on that issue, says:
Those directly affected by 9-11 who themselves escaped or/and who lost dear loved ones, suffer still. No one thinks to ask after them, to ask first and foremost how they are doing now, this nine years later, and then what they think…
One of those 9/11 survivors, Nikki Stern, a lady who lost her husband during the 9/11 attacks, talks about her views, nine years later, in USA Today.
I have already referred to some of her words here, but they are worth repeating today, exactly nine years later:
Nine years later, Sept. 11 still flexes its muscles, grabbing headlines with stories about the war on terrorism, problems with airport security, intelligence agency dysfunction and unbridled hostility toward all things Muslim.
She mentions that while “We’ve been living and breathing 9/11 for years — some of us quite literally. Even that doesn’t garner much sympathy,” and cites the refusal by the House of Representatives in July to pass an emergency designed to provide financial aid to rescue workers sickened by exposure to toxic fumes at the World Trade Center Site.
As to the inevitable “anniversary sad speeches,” that will come today:
I’m not a big fan of commemorative occasions, but they do serve a purpose; they help us to remember, to honor and, hopefully, to establish a legacy for future generations. But judging by our news cycle, Sept. 11’s legacy seems to be either anger or apathy. You’re with us or you’re against us — or you’re so over it.
Mrs. Stern says that, while she misses her husband and her marriage very much, she really doesn’t need an anniversary to remember “either how awful it was then or how much it can still ache now.” She would like to remember “the remarkable moments of selfless outreach that marked the initial response to the terror attacks,” and she would like others to remember as well.
As to what many of us have discussed recently, that lost unity and common purpose:
For hours, days, weeks and months after the attacks, all sorts of people joined together to help and to comfort. In particular, Lower Manhattan was witness to a variety of people of all faiths and ethnicities who came to help. They embodied the very essence of community; their outreach was to families and survivors, to moderate Muslims, to rescue workers and neighbors, to friends and to strangers. The watchword was resilience, not revenge.
For a short time, many people reached out past their own grief and terrifying uncertainty to a seemingly contradictory sense of possibility: that out of this horror we might reach a new level of understanding.
Nine years out, what comes to mind when we read about or talk about or even think about 9/11 is anger or fear or mistrust; all the failures and grievances that have hardened our worldview. We’ve retreated to our small groups of like-minded people whose absolute certainty enables our own; we see nothing in common with those “others” whose politics, faith, background, or outlook don’t match ours. We see no reason to make an effort.
She says, “If that’s 9/11’s legacy, if that’s how we honor our dead, our country, or our values, I want no part of it.”
But she concludes with words of hope:
I don’t know whether or when this nation, its leaders or its citizens, might be willing to dial back the outrage and stow the self-serving grandstanding. Maybe we can start with Sept. 11, on which day we can spend more time and energy commemorating the spirit that once brought forth our better selves and bonded us in common purpose.
That’s a legacy I would embrace as a far more fitting tribute to those who were killed than any memorial I can imagine.
In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof tells us the story about how two other women, Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, who also lost their husbands in the 9/11 attacks, bonded with each other to help the more than half a million widows in Afghanistan, and
…at a time when the American government reacted to the horror of 9/11 mostly with missiles and bombs, detentions and waterboardings, Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley turned to education and poverty-alleviation projects — in the very country that had incubated a plot that had pulverized their lives.
This weekend, Mrs. Retik, Jewish herself, is planning to speak at a mosque in Boston. She will be trying to recruit members of the mosque to join her battle against poverty and illiteracy in Afghanistan.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.