The Sound of Silence

Fine gray dust hung eerily in the air. Dust from burned papers, computers, clothing, airplanes...and people. There was a powerful silence, as if Nature were holding a Mass. When the city finally started to speak, it was still silent in our hearts. How would we go about clearing away the blood and dust from the eyes and noses of an entire country of people? How could we?

So much loss.

I couldn’t get the image of the man falling from the top of the building out of my mind for days. He had time to make a choice about how he wanted to die. He would rather jump than burn.  He got up that morning, maybe he stopped for coffee at Starbucks, took the elevator to the top of one of the Twin Towers and then, jumped to his death. It took so long for him to fall that he had time to understand. I wonder if all he heard as he fell, was silence.

So much death.

 

In the days that followed firefighters, police men and women, ambulance crews, so many volunteers and even dogs worked to preserve the life that remained. If you were alive at this time, you felt this power. The connection to the person standing next to me in a grocery store even seemed intimate. We were experiencing the same thing, we cared about the same thing and we were terrified of the same thing. This compelling need to save and survive flowed through us all like hot lava, silently scorching away any resistance we had to each other. Differences didn’t matter anymore. We were all Human.

So much pain.

 

Fortunately, silence is something meant to be broken. Crickets, who are silent just before dawn, explode into joyous song as first light appears. Just like crickets, we were also silent during this black time but as years have passed, dawn broke and we have come to accept it. I am aware that “with joyous song” is not how many who experienced profound loss, have passed these years. I still grieve deeply for them.

For some though, it is simple history. Most young people don’t have memories of trying desperately to find out if a sister-in-law was on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. They didn’t have to worry about a best friend who was in a meeting, two blocks from the Twin Towers that morning. Were they dead? Will there be more danger? It isn’t personal to them like it is to many of us who spent that entire jaw dropping time in silence, not even knowing how to use our words. I am glad for that but I weep that they have not experienced that lava flow of life force that connected us all during that time.   

Or, maybe they have.

9/11 changed the life trajectory of every single person in our country, especially our youth. Terrorism became a new possibility, a tool that young people didn’t realize they had until now. A tool for young souls, crying out for someone to acknowledge their pain. Better than suicide because it sends a shockwave through a community; a deathwave shaking everyone to their core.

How do we share that "sound of silence” with the next generation? Is there a way to experience it without tragedy? Is there a way to touch into and give hope to the tormented children, despairing at a future they cannot envision?

 I don’t know.

But we must try.