Perpetual Mourning

It's been a few days since the fifth anniversary of September 11. I wanted to write about it, but had nothing but emptiness to offer. I couldn't watch the news this year, because I didn't want to relive that day in a constant media loop, but rather, wanted to quietly ponder it without bias.

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This morning, I read several bloggers highlighted on DCBlogs who shared their thoughts and memories. The one by Not Yet a Wino struck me most deeply. Read it here.

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September 11 was, without a doubt, the most horrific day in the history of our storied country. But what have we done that is any different or better today than we did five years ago? Keith Olbermann said it best: we have squandered the moment.

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Certainly, we've moved on with life, as we should. But are we really defeating the terrorists? We live in a nation that was, as one commentator said last week, "looked to as a place of hope, but is increasingly seen as a nation of despair." We live, as another blogger put it, in constant fear of the most innocuous objects: baby formula, shaving gel, tennis shoes.

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I grew up in a faith that has lots of theological answers about why we're here and where we're going, particularly after this life. While I find those answers reassuring at times, I also find them increasingly inadequate, especially as I get older. While I understand intellectually that those I love are gone, but that I might one day see them or even be with them again, I, nonetheless, long for them to be here with me now, to share in my joys and sorrows now, to know about my life now. While my life moves on, it moves on without them and that is part of my perpetual mourning.

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I have no doubt we will ever forget what happened that day; to suggest otherwise, as some in the current administration have implied, is insulting. I also have no doubt that there are those among us who will mourn their entire lives. For those of us who lost only our innocence that day, our "job" is "to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort."

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It's hard to truly move on, I think, when there is an inexplicable hole that's been ripped in your heart. Between every beat of your heart and every breath you take is a moment, a space that represents the line between life and death. I think for the survivors and those who lost someone that day, that moment is the place where their life stops and holds. That moment is where perpetual mourning resides. Always. Constantly. Forever.