May Sarton, “Of Grief“
There are some griefs so loud
They could bring down the sky,
And there are griefs so still
None knows how deep they lie,
Endured, never expended.
There are old griefs so proud
They never speak a word;
They never can be mended.
And these nourish the will
And keep it iron-hard.
On this tenth anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 we can’t help but to look back over these ten years at our collective response…the wars, the security at airports, the ongoing threats of terrorism…
In addition to our collective response to 9/11, each of us has had a personal response, a personal reaction that touched something at the very core of who we are.
On the days, weeks and months following the tragedy we call ‘9/11,’ I had the task of sitting with several eye-witnesses to the event, and one who was working at the World Trade Center and got out.
A man I had never seen before nor since knocked on my office door and asked if he could talk to me, saying, “I just need to tell someone…in private; I don’t expect anything but to listen, to be a witness to what happened to me.”
I remember his story in vivid detail, how he was literally about to enter the doorway on his way to his office at the World Trade Center when the first plane struck…he backed away, looking up, and found himself in the middle of the street, unable to move – he said he felt ‘paralyzed.’
I listened to his description of what happened to him, just as he asked me to, and when he felt finished he stood up, thanked me, and walked out, still in a kind of daze. I never saw nor heard from him again.
The shock was obvious. It wasn’t grief – it was shock. We were all shocked, of course, but for some it’s a lasting trauma.
Then there was grief – a sense of loss…the loss of loved ones and friends, for some; the loss of innocence and the loss of a sense of security – the invulnerability we had felt before was gone for all of us.
May Sarton said it this way: “There are some griefs so loud they could bring down the sky, There are old griefs so proud/They never speak a word;/They never can be mended..”
We were all shocked; we were all eye witnesses as we watched the scenes again and again on television. Many of us visited Ground Zero as the fire burned underground, way down beneath the surface. That’s where deep grief burns.
Our initial shock turned to deep grief. The inner world of each of us was changed forever, and something in our collective consciousness was altered.
We lost two young men that day, Keith and Scott Coleman, who worked together at Cantor-Fitzgerald two of the 658 employees lost that dreadful day.
“… there are griefs so still
None knows how deep they lie,
Endured, never expended.
There are old griefs so proud
They never speak a word;
They never can be mended.”
What we refer to as “9/11” was a collective experience. At first it brought us together.
Diane Farrell, then Westport’s First Selectman, called to ask me to come to the emergency preparedness center at the fire station on the Post Road where she had gathered town officials from Police and Fire Departments and so forth.
I recall listening to the Chief of Police as he described plans; as I looked at him and over his shoulder, behind him, there was a television screen and for the first time I saw the unbelievable images of the planes hitting the towers – up to that moment I had no access to a television.
I had gone to Mt. Kisko for a clergy gathering. The first I heard about the event was from our sexton, Bobby, who came to my office just as I was about to leave for the meeting and asked if I had heard about a plane hitting the World Trade Center – we assumed it was an accident.
While I was on route to the meeting the second plane hit, which I learned about after I arrived at the meeting and joined colleagues around a radio. The convener of our meeting offered a brief prayer and we all returned to our respective congregations.
That’s when I got the call from Diane Farrell and went to the meeting, at the conclusion of which she asked me to offer a prayer for the group of about twenty of us – we joined hands and I said, “We begin our prayer in silence,” and, giving me a few moments to gather thoughts and to find words to unite us.
There were lots of collective experiences that followed. Diane asked me to organize a town-wide memorial service which we held at Staples High School a couple of days later to a standing-room only gathering at which I tried to involve as many of the religious groups in town as possible.
I went to Whitman’s signature poem, Song of Myself. In chapter 33 he wrote:
Agonies are one of my changes of garments
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself
become the wounded person,
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe
I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my
comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,
They have cleared the beams away, they tenderly lift me
forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush
is for my sake,
Painless after all I lie exhausted by not so unhappy,
(Clean) and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads
are bared of fire-caps,
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
The Sunday following 9/11, on the 16th, we had two standing-room-only services here – at 9 and 11 a.m.
During those services I invited questions and comments; the first came from ten year old Zoe Apoian who asked, “Why do they hate us so much?” It was a rhetorical question, in a way, but it was also an important question for us to ponder, both of which I tried to acknowledge.
We all wonder why they hate us so much, and we’ve all been witness to the destructiveness of such hatred.
Next Sunday we’ll take another look at questions of ‘faith and doubt at ground zero,’ referring to the PBS documentary done by Frontline.
I’ll conclude with some lines from a Dear Friends letter I wrote on October 22, 2001:
“We must not allow the fanatical terrorists to break into our hearts and replace the natural compassion that is the essence of our faith to be killed by germs of hatred. Anyone who has been paying attention for the last forty years, as I have, is aware that agents of our country have done some pretty terrible things. You don’t have to dig too deep to see them; and see them you should.
“But we must not give up on this nation because of the flaws. Yes, we are flawed. But we are a great nation. Lincoln reminds us that this nation was ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal.’ Now we are testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure! We are on a strange new battlefield, but we will work together for the same reasons Lincoln expressed so eloquently at Gettysburg.
“The World Trade Center holds the earthly remains of two beloved young men of this congregation. Those sacred remains may be removed from Manhattan, but the memory of Keith and Scott will not be moved. Precious memories sink into the depth of our souls, a treasured storehouse of loved ones who remind us to live our lives with love and compassion.
“…(we are reminded) to express our love now—not to defer or neglect it, for we may not pass that way again. Take the time to tell them you love them. Do it now. Such expressions of love cleanse the soul, renew the spirit, create caring relationships, build families and communities characterized by a deep faith that the world can be a wonderful place. Every expression of love is like a little shovel that helps us dig a deeper well from which living waters can be drawn. May we keep digging together so we can be nourished in all the days ahead.”