| A 911 Diary: Day Seven In Memoriam...and Renewal |
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9/17 p.m.: beginning the longest road: i'm home from my seventh straight day down at the site. since saturday (when i kinda lost it) i've been working more with the families than the rescue workers. in those early days, the family members and friends of victims were running on adrenaline and hope/denial (is there much difference?). they wouldn't talk about their feelings because they were too overwhelming, so they kept running from hospital to hospital, posting flyers, talking to reporters, needing to make sure they did everything they could think of, as if that might earn their loved one a reprieve. even saturday (my worst day) was not that bad, as they had something still to do---the dna testing. sunday was quiet, as many were at church and with family. today was a very different mood...definitely starting to begin the long agonizing road to acceptance and grief. so much of what i hear (the need to talk about how special their loved one was, how they just WANT them to be okay so badly that it must happen, and how there is no way the world will go on without them) echoes what i went through years ago myself, so i know those feelings well, and how necessary it is to express them, and express them, until finally you move to acceptance. now that the city is starting to show some 'normal' activity---roads open again to traffic, people going to work, sidewalk vendors selling hot dogs---for so many of us it almost seems incongruous: how can this be happening, like a normal day, when there is this horrible loss and the world will never be the same? yet we all know how important it is that life go on...it's going to be a long, hard road. |
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