i mourn for that kate now,
that kate who wanted so desperately for everything to be fine. to be as fine as it seemed. to be as fine as anyone could imagine just by looking.
10 years ago jeff and i were in pittsburg new hampshire. it was morning, and instead of fishing, we set out looking for a new place to share our anniversary dinner. we were carefully going through the motions of what it meant to be married, what it meant to celebrate our marriage, what it meant to push through and be as present as we dared be within our very complicated fiction. i remember how careful i felt, how incredibly careful.
we walked into a lodge we'd never been in, and a TV was on, a movie i thought. it was early morning still, and no one else was there but someone at the desk, stunned to tell us about the plane, the tower. we stood and watched as the second plane hit, thought it was a re-run of the first, and then realized we were watching it happen right then.
the immensity and complexity of what we saw was not something i could comprehend in that moment (and perhaps ever after), it was too big, too much, with too much loss.
sometimes when i am already mired in my own sadness, my own trauma, it is as if there is no more room. grieving, there is no more room for grief. it is not gone or set aside, instead it is as if it is paid forward, and only in looking back i can see what i could not see then. my own crumbling life eclipsed my immediate emotional reaction to the towers falling. i could not grok it. it was too much on top of too much.
i feel selfish admitting that, even now, even here. i can be compassionate to that kate, but i also realize that since i was not able to process even one little bit of the trade tower catastrophe, i had to process it later. i have had to process it since. i still cannot see images, protect myself from my own memories of bodies falling. i cannot hold that level of horror.
there is no law of conservation of horror
or conservation of grief
or conservation of loss
mine does not lessen yours
yours does not lessen mine
and both, it seems, move forward with raw stinging tenderness, unhealed, unhealable.
so on this day, this year, i consciously honor all of us
here's to the people we were before
and here's to the people we are after
and the raw tender hope that pushes up in spite of all we've known and all we've lost
