Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-09-12 - 5:52 p.m.

A Day After

Somber. It's the right word.

I haven't got anything particularly amusing or lighthearted to share with you. If it felt appropriate, which it doesn't, I couldn't find it in me anyway.

So I think about this odd, odd happening. How unreal it is. How far away it is. I knew no one who worked in those buildings; I knew no one who was on those flights. I know people who knew people, but it wasn't my people, not my family. But it was.

And I just had to go through and change the tense in the entire last paragraph. Knew. Was.

I'm not angry. I'm profoundly sad, and I'm somewhat numbed by the repetition of the horror - 24/7 CNN, and I continue to watch. But I have not heard any recordings of those last cell phone calls. I do not think I could bear that.

I've thought about those pilots, and those passengers, and those people carrying paper cups of bad machine coffee back to their desks. How it was for them. We all have.

I've thought about what I could do. Donate blood. Donate money. It's not much. But it's the contribution of a grain of sand on the beach, knowing its place, knowing its value.

I sent out my best thoughts this morning, for everyone I could think of who has been directly hurt by this. For the children. For the people who chose the brave freedom of that long dive. For the firefighters and policeman who gave their lives in service. And mostly this morning for anyone still there in the rubble, alone and hurt and frightened; I asked for mercy and safety in whatever form it may be provided.

And I think it's true that we serve best by continuing to do what we do. Those of us far from the middle, who don not have to be paralyzed by grief, who can hold the patterns of everyday life and allow those who simply cannot function the space to do what they must. What grieving they need to do, what actions they need to take. It does the living and the dead no honor to dramatize to the point of paralysis, those of us whose grief is so far removed; we really have no right to call this tragedy ours in the name of patriotism. We must figure out how best to support those whose hearts have been truly torn.

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