Thanks to doing my Morning Pages, as soon as I wrote out the date this morning, it hit me what day it was: 9/11, and thanks to my ritual of consulting Portraits 9/11/01 on this day, I also knew how I would commemorate this sad anniversary. Contrary to its omission of the 9/11 anniversary last year, today’s Wall Street Journal’s front page features the gigantic light beams that will stretch into the night sky from lower Manhattan tonight. That image, along with all the other terrible ones it conjures, spreads that familiar dread in my stomach.
So, without further ado, here is my small tribute to the victims of 9/11, picking, at random, the headlines of a few of those obituaries that the New York Times collected so admirably in Portraits 9/11/01. Monuments are great markers of tragedy, but only obituaries can give us a tiny glimpse of the lives that were lost:
Jennifer Maffeo – The Giving Gene (40 years old)
Joseph Maffeo – “Joey Pockets” (30)
Jay Magazine – Food as the Music of Love (48)
Charles Magee – A Risk-Taking Rationale (51)
Joseph V. Maggitti – Tickets to Paradise Island (47)
Ron Magnuson – Golf and Other Loves (57)
Daniel L. Maher – Coming Around to Sports (50)
– As I typed out their names, I am struck again by how young these people were, how very much in the midst of life.
May their memory be for a blessing.
Ja und hinter jedem Namen ein Leben, ein ganzes aber fuer immer unvollendetes, sinnlos und grausam in den Tod gerissenes Leben. Immer wenn ich diese Namen lese muss ich weinen. Obwohl ich diese Menschen gar nicht kannte. Aber das spielt keine Rolle. Denn mit den Namen werden die Toten und ihr Leben aus der Anonymitaet genommen. Das ist wie mit den Stolpersteinen auf Gehwegen in deutschen Staedten, auf denen Namen der juedischen Hausbewohner stehen, die in Kzs umgekommen sind. Das ist fuer mich so viel fassbarer als die unvorstellbare Zahl von 6 Millionen.
Barbara – ja, ein Name macht es viel fassbarer.
I spent part of the evening last night watching a couple of National Geographic docs on the subject, including one on photographers and videographers who were taking images of the day.
William, good for you.