Two Graveyards; One Grief

I ran errands today, returned a radio, met a friend for coffee... then I headed down to Century 21, a gigundo department store I'd only heard of, but never been to since my arrival here in New York.

As I walked towards it on Church, I noticed huge buses parked along the street, and the BIG purse vendors, the ones with heavily cloaked boxes, slyly offering up goods... I had no idea what the attraction was... there was a ancient church and adjoining graveyard there that I could see ahead to my left...to be honest, I couldn't imagine why a centuries old graveyard would attract so much attention, so many cameras. Still, for all the buses, there were only a few wandering among the tombstones that marked century old graves.

I looked to my right at that point, and saw the graveyard that was worthy of their picture taking, their silence, the pointing and the buses and the souvenir vendors; the WTC, Ground Zero, the Big Hole in the Ground.

The last time I was in New York and there had been actual buildings here, the ex had wanted to have lunch on the top.. I nixed the idea, watching them sway ever so slightly in the huge wind at the top. I had no desire to eat, then lose my expensive lunch on the way down in those elevators. I don't regret not going up there.

When I worked in travel, one of the companies we dealt with was there... and moved a few months before 9/11. I was eternally grateful I didn't have to say I knew someone who was there.

I never felt tall of those who were in the towers were heroes. Yes, there were some who stayed behind with friends, who struggled to get others to safety... exceptions, not the rule. They were, for the most part, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fire fighters and police... doing their duty... going up when they were around 99.9% sure they were not going to come down... heroes there, yes.

I didn't look over. I didn't want to. Let them lie in peace, was my thought. This is from a woman who spent much of her childhood gazing over battlefields and graveyards of long dead soldiers who fought in the Civil War. This was not ready to be examined, in my mind.

This is too new, still. I remember it all too clearly, the day, the feelings. We all do. It's said a well known playwright thought, "Isn't this an inconvenience." and used that as a catalyst to write a play about people not being nice at that time. I can understand his feelings... I would have thought the same thing, wanting to get home, not caring about what was going on.. focused on me.

When I left, the area was even more filled up with people and vendors, and I faced into the old graveyard, of those long dead... the two in juxtaposition from each other. One filled with people who died from scurvy and childbirth and cancer and infections and measles... one filled with those who died from anger and hate we do not really understand.

I believe you are alive until the last person who knew you dies....with that as a truth, it will be decades before these people finally perish.

I don't want to be a gawker at that place, to think of those people we all watched jump rather than burn. Of watching the towers fall with beautiful grace, much as a ballerina does when she sinks into her curtsy at the end of a performance.

Their dust is still in the area, snuggled into brick and mortar crevices...we've hoovered it up, and dumped it out, and it circulates in the area. The street and rooftops still hold minuscule parts of the towers and all they held. There was an assistant to the mayor, who knew her husband was in one of the towers when it fell.. she was pregnant at the time.. and she ran out and scooped up ash, knowing that was all of it's father her child would ever have.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the end, no matter if it's from 1700 or 2001, our graves end up being tourist attractions.

One is no sadder than the other, ... people stood and wept over the lowering of the casket of their loved ones.... on the other side of the street, the wound is just fresher. When the building is finished, when there is a place to walk, to stand and remember... then, I will return.

For now, though, it pains me to think about it, to view this place, anymore than I could drive by Columbine after the shootings. Perhaps I need more time than I thought to sort it out in my head, perhaps I need to suck it up and look... perhaps I need monuments to help me understand.

All I know is, I don't want to be on a bus or leaning against the fence to remember. The rain washed that dust into the graves facing the big hole in the ground... mingling the two sites together.

It seems fitting.