The Healing Of Wounds

Takes More Than Time

By Tom Anselm

Eighteen years ago yesterday, I was walking down the hallway of Cross Keys Middle School. I encountered Linda, a teacher, leaning against the wall. I asked her if she was okay, she looking shaken and pale. She looked up and all she could say was “We’re under attack.”

What? Under attack?

“Go find a television. A plane flew into a building in New York,” Linda whispered.

That day, September 11, 2001, has become one of those days of “where were you when . . . ,” similar to the assassination of John Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Over 3200 people perished in three separate locations, some instantly, others gradually. Few survived in any of those four horrific plane crashes. The aftermath saw emergency responders dying years later, from cancer and other illnesses related to the clean up and rescue efforts. Of which there was very little, of course.

It was the single worst domestic terror attack in human history. But today is not to re-chronicle the events of that awful day. Rather, I have been thinking the past few weeks of what has happened since. I’ve often wondered how the survivors of those who lost their lives are doing. I read that as many as 1000 never received official confirmation of the death of their loved ones. No remains could be found. Dust, to dust.

So for 18 years, they have mourned, all of them. The parents, some of whom died in that time frame. Spouses. Children, some of whom were unborn that day. Grandparents, cousins, best friends, colleagues, neighbors. Surely every moment of every day, they have mourned.

As a compassionate people, we have tried to honor these innocent patriots, these heroes, those who were tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those who got caught up in the immense hate of people who held no regard for the consequences of that hatred.

In the downtown Manhattan borough of New York, at what was called ‘Ground Zero’ for a long time, there rises a single tower where there once were two.

The complex is officially called The National September 11 Memorial and Museum. It is where the greatest number of losses occurred. To describe this site here would take many pages. Suffice it to say, it is a sacred site that, one day, I would like to visit, to honor their sacrifice. To mourn their loss.

At the Pentagon in Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, there are 184 elongated concrete benches, one for each person lost on that Flight 77. At night, underlit and scattered geometrically in a field, they present a very solemn remembrance.

The third memorial that has been established is on a small rise in a field of wildflowers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the site of the crashed Flight 93 that some think was headed to the US Capital building. There rises a 93 foot tower, with 40 chrome wind chimes attached inside to represent the souls who died there. It is called The Tower of Voices. I listened to a simulation of the sound these chimes emit, constantly resonating amidst the quiet field. It brought me to tears.

Sacrifice. The unwilling sacrifice of all those who were lost that day. The mournful sacrifice of those survivors who have continued to live, and die, with those loses burned into their hearts.

These memorials, honorable and fitting and touching and beautiful as they are, do serve to take a bit of the sting from that day’s horror. But, I would imagine, only a bit.

It is for these, as well as the victims, that I prayed yesterday.

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