How We Remember Tragedy
I don’t always remember tragedies on their anniversary, not even the most personally devastating of them. I’ve often been to the Field of Flags that Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield displays in remembrance of the September 11 attacks, but today I was caught up in my own world and did not do so intentionally. People have been posting about the anniversary all week. I was aware, but not in tune with today’s date when I chose to go walk the mountain, and I thought they had moved to only doing the Field of Flags on 10 year intervals, so I was doubly surprised.
You can buy a flag when they take them down next week. I bought 3 quite a few years ago. One for myself, and two as gifts.
My most memorable 9/11 experience was of course the day it happened. Everyone who’s old enough remembers what they were doing when the Twin Towers were hit, the same way those who were old enough when President Kennedy was assassinated remember what they were doing. I hope there is no shocking comparison on the horizon for those who are now younger than 25.
The experiences of others are vivid in my mind too. Shortly after my divorce I was teaching World Geography in a local college. I was a mess, barely getting the lessons read before teaching them, still terrified of public speaking, finding out that there were adjuncts like me sleeping in their cars and that the school wasn’t hiring full-time instructors at full-time pay any time soon.
The teacher’s guide instructed me to ask the students to share their 9/11 experiences. I had low expectations of the participation, but did as the guide said. I still carry some of those student’s stories with me. One in particular, a student whose family knew she was supposed to be in the towers that day realized how much she was loved and how scared her family was while listening to her voice messages once she was able to reconnect. “Just checking on you” shifted to fear, then abject fear, then tears and broken voices as the messages kept coming.
The battlefield is normally off limits, but they have more tolerance during the Field of Flags. Today there were officials, employees and a horse for presentation of the Riderless Horse. I was listening to bagpipes play Amazing Grace as I walked up the mountain, my original purpose, and then a 21-gun salute. As I left the park they were still reading the 2,977 names of the victims, each one a person that was loved and missed.
I think that how we remember our darkest tragedies has a lot to do with how the future works out for our children. Heroes, both the ones who took an oath and the ones who rose to the occasion deserve all our respect and gratitude. Honoring their heroism helps us have faith in humankind.
Often though, the pain of things that didn’t have to be makes us angry. No one wants these shocks to ever happen again, but sometimes we respond in ways that make it more likely. We rattle the sabres and fail to look at cause and effect with depth.
I understand that. I’ve watched the missing man formation fly while the 21-gun salute fired for family. I’ve waited for word on what happened to other loved ones in more than one kind of situation. “Breaking News” rarely helps. A journalist, prepared or not, is dropped in a developing situation and they repeat hearsay from excited strangers, most often without enough detail to know if it happened to the person you love or to the person someone else does.
Whether your tragedy was publicized or not, most of us know what waiting to know it’s okay to breathe again feels like, and the only thing worse than not knowing is knowing that the wrong answer became the true one.
None of us wants to lose our people, our sons, daughters and others to anything, especially not hate or unspeakable tragedy. The best way we can honor the sacrifice of the free and the brave is by doing what we can to prevent something like it from happening again, to keep their children from needing to make those same sacrifices.
Here’s the whole story, for all of us in every conflict, the large trans-national ones, and even the small interpersonal ones. We will know peace, justice and the pursuit of happiness when each and every one of us knows peace, justice and the pursuit of happiness, not a moment sooner.
It will always be important to stand up for what is right. We can never rest for long. We have to keep standing up, and then do it again, especially for those least able to stand up for themselves. The best way to insure your own peace, justice and pursuit of happiness is to stand up for someone else’s. Keep honoring the sacrifices of those who stood up by standing up, by helping to prevent their children’s losses. That’s how we change the world.
