| A 911 Diary: Closing Ceremony In Memoriam...and Renewal |
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5/30/2002: closing ceremonies at ground zero: echoes of those early days: now that i'm home from the closing ceremony at ground zero i feel the need to put my first thoughts down and send them to you all; hope you'll bear with me as you all did so generously last fall as i tried to process what was happening then the same way. feel free to ignore this if you've had enough; feel free to share this if you wish as well. the ceremony, marking the official end of the recovery efforts and the beginning of the rebuilding, was bittersweet. many feel that we should not be having "yet another ceremony"; you know i shared that feeling somewhat at the time of the 6 month anniversary of the attack. i debated accepting the invitation to attend this ceremony as a member of the fema team, but decided to go for a number of reasons. first, i felt the need to say a final goodbye to those 1721 victims whose remains were never recovered (the debris at the staten island landfill will still be sifted for remains for months to come). second, i wanted to experience the contrast of seeing the cleared, empty, quiet site (over 1.6 MILLION TONS of debris was removed) now vs. the huge and seemingly insurmountable pile of steaming, stinking devastation we faced every day after the collapse. although i'd returned to ground zero a few times in these months and seen the "progress", i haven't been back for quite a while, so i knew the contrast would be marked. and third, i hoped to see again some of the families and rescue workers i had worked with, cried with, and gotten as well as given such strength from last fall. a group of the family members have kept in touch with me, and i hoped to see more. when i arrived, i was escorted to a special area for the rescue workers, but found some of the families i knew and chose to stand with them. the ceremony started right on time with the ringing of the traditional fire department signal for a firefighter down: 4 series of five bells. each ring echoed through the silence like a knife; i could physically feel the impact. tears welled up, but i'd determined not to let them fall. and they didn't spill even through the next ritual: the bearing, with honor guard, of an empty flag-draped stretcher to symbolize the bodies left behind. many times in those first days work would stop and go silent as one more stretcher, bearing one more body (or often parts of a body) would be slowly and respectfully accompanied out of the pile. a little embarrassing to mention (my scientist side vs. my flaky hippie side, i guess), but each time that would happen, i felt i could see the soul of that person hovering over the stretcher, freed from the crushing weight of the debris as their family members were freed from the uncertainty. this time, as that empty stretcher slowly passed us, i couldn't help but think that in a way, finally, the souls of all those left were being set free as well. i thought that this sense of harmony and closure and recognition and acceptance and commemoration is the true value of ritual and ceremony. uplifting rather than as sad as i'd thought it would be. but the next ritual was indeed painful: pipe bands from many departments, many of whom had played at numerous funerals of their comrades in the months after 9/11, slowly accompanying a fire department ambulance, lights flashing but moving quietly at a crawl. it only brought home that after the second day (the last survivor was found september 12), there was never a rush when the ambulance was called; they were always hearses rather than life-saving transports. then they removed the "miracle beam", a steel girder that had somehow been left upright when the towers collapsed. workers had carefully worked around the beam all these months, loathe to disturb the one thing left standing. they finally cut it down now, laid it on a flatbed, draped with a flag, and accompanied it out silently like a body, complete with honor guard. officials had said it was because it symbolized everything that was lost, but to me it was significant for the very opposite reason: it had remained standing in the midst of all the devastation, and therefore symbolized to me our spirit, to remain unbroken in the face of this terrible attack. for that reason, i'd hoped it would become a central part of the memorial to be built. the family members then threw flowers into the site, many crying yet feeling, i believe, the closure and some peace. after all, for many of them who'd never buried their loved ones, this was a funeral as well. while my tears continued to well up, i still managed not to let them fall. then all the rescue workers walked past as the families, officials, and spectators clapped quietly. i chose not to walk with them, but to remain with the families with whom i'd shared so much. as the silent procession filed by, the people i was with put their arms around me and begin quietly to sing 'amazing grace'. for the first time this day, i allowed the tears to flow freely then. |
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