|
ONE YEAR LATER |
 |
|
|
 Audrey Yeager is based in Yelm, WA |
|
|
By AUDREY YEAGER
of TheColumnists.com
What is going on in our heads a year after that autumn
day in September 2001? Are Americans any different than they
were the day before that dreadful morning?
The sky hasn’t fallen; the endless blue is still up there. The sun continues to come up and the moon to rise. Orion’s belt still girds the starry waist of the gargantuan constellation. Except for a disabled Pentagon, a blackened Pennsylvania field and a massive dark grave where twin towers once stood in New York City, all appears to be as it should be in the United States of America.
If appearances counted much as a measuring stick for a country’s emotional and psychological state, we could still make that statement, “All is as it should be.” There are no more citizens jumping off bridges than there were before, no epidemic of suicides or highways of distraught families leaving the cities for forest caves. The 50 states appear to be quite serene, but we all know appearances can be deceiving.
A nation’s birthmark of peace and certainty was removed by the most torturous means on 9/11. Shortly after the sun broke over the horizon that morning the almost spiritual comfort we had known since our country's inception disappeared forever. We were, and are, permanently closed off from those sweet days. It has been a year of collective grieving. A year like no other--ever.
In the hearts of all of us there is a dire need to explain the inexplicable and we have had many months of wrestling with the dark angel of evil to make some sense of the sadistic fanaticism that blew our way of life into millions of permanently lost pieces. But good sense won’t work here, nor logic, nor reason.
Maybe all we can do is remember, and search our souls for a deeper love. Love is not the easy path, selflessness never is, and when it has a good hold on us we can count on it causing us pain sooner or later…and that’s okay. It more than balances out with the high end only inches from our Creator’s hand. De Vinci’s “Finger of God” drawing comes to mind, and most of us wouldn’t miss the experience of loving for anything. What a pity the enemy who speaks so often of God has no conception of His love.
Grief, whether for country,
neighbor, or a dear one, can’t actually be described. But,
C.S. Lewis comes as close as any writer I know. Not long ago
I read a book of his titled “A Grief Observed,” which
is a compilation of very personal sufferings regarding the shattering
death of his wife. I understand this book more now than I did
before that fateful autumn day. Instead of running from grief,
Lewis bounds right into its center. He examines everything in
that awful place, challenging Providence and debating with himself,
yet he comes out with a tiny little something to hang onto. Inevitably,
he is forced to face the fact that his wife will never return,
but he also begins to see that the open wound will heal over.
Mind you, the scar will be permanent. However, the bleeding will
cease and he will again function almost as before. There is hope
in that.
I write of grief because, as a country, we have buried our Dearest
Loves, approximately 3,000 quite literally. But, as if it were
not enough to place a hand we have held, or a darling face we
have kissed, into the earth, this new, and unimaginable mourning
is not mankind’s old enemy. It is not that inescapable end
of life that we all know must come with its time of grieving
and healing. It isn’t the common death of our loved ones,
the known eventuality that brings its own form of release with
the power to pick up the threads of our lives and go on weaving.
This stupefying catastrophe destroyed too many threads and ripped
chunks from the very tapestry of our collective lives.
Finding ourselves in the mourner’s room with millions of our countrymen, we are a new, but more solemn people, a disquieted, ever so slightly out of balance people, whose only moments of true emotional comfort come when we manage to sneak out on the 12-month-old images in our mind.
We may forget for a moment or even a few hours, and then it is as if a bucket of cold water were tossed in our face. The jet sticks out of one of the towers like a great burning flower stuck in a table arrangement of terror…surreal.
The image will remain against all effort.
In the first few months after 9/11 many of us noticed how much kinder people were to one another, but recently I heard the old attitudes of rudeness, anger and rage are alive and well within our streets. It seems we “learn hard,” as my grandfather used to say.
So, my precious America the Beautiful, with no recommendations, no answers and no solutions, I leave you to Heaven.
© 2002 by Audrey Yeager.
The logo illustration is © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Audrey Yeager. To send an
email, click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |