“They Still Haven’t Gotten Over 9/11 . . .”

Ever since I heard that phrase quietly spoken from the audience at one of Bridgewater’s public hearings earlier this year, the words have remained engraved in my memory. 

I have often pondered upon that utterance which seemed to have come almost as an afterthought from a person who appeared to be sincere, if not sensitive.


This banner hangs in the atrium of the Bridgewater Commons Mall.

This week, the media – especially those of the printed page and the Internet – have been saturated with personal stories of people whose lives have been completely turned upside down by the tragic events of that fateful day – a day that forever changed the psyche of America.

So, I ask you, how do you “get over” 9/11 when, mere days before the commemoration of its 10^th anniversary, our government informs us of yet another credible threat scheduled to take place on the anniversary date itself?

You don’t.  You remain vigilant, and there is plenty of distinguished company to support my thinking:
 
Last night, I read a piece in The Wall Street Journal by columnist Peggy Noonan entitled “We'll Never Get Over It, Nor Should We,”  in which she gives her own account of why we should remember this day of “horror and heroes.”  (Noonan was also a White House speechwriter.)

I followed up with, “A Burden too Great for Anyone to Bear,”  the vivid Star-Ledger story of George Tabeek, the number two person in charge of security at the Port Authority for the World Trade Center who, to this day, cannot erase the personal torment which he feels about his dead co-workers.


There is also “The Simple Gift of Life,” another outstanding account by The Star-Ledger, of Joe Lott who, through sheer fate, missed by minutes a meeting in the North Tower with his team, all of whom perished.  He, like George Tabeek, still hasn’t “gotten over it.”

And then there is the story of Rider University student Gina Difazio described in a Courier News account, Overcoming 9/11 Trauma, who, at the age of 11, lost her dad who was working on the 105^th floor of the North Tower when it collapsed.

In these and many other similar stories which have dominated the national public consciousness this week, we are reminded only too vividly of how lives can be changed in the flick of a second.

Our own personal family story has a much more favorable outcome:

Our son Dave works for the Hartford Steam Boiler insurance company.  He periodically visited its regional office on the 30^th floor of the South Tower and had been thinking of going in on September 11^th, but shifted his calendar to another day.

Jon Simonean, one of Dave’s HSB colleagues was in his office when the first plane struck the North Tower.
 
He didn’t wait very long to react:  In his personal account published under Remembering 9-11 in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, Simonean remembers how “I feared an explosion and I immediately knew to vacate the building.”  All HSB employees made it out safely that day.

The sad and nationally transformative disaster of 9/11 is not something to get over, but is something to keep memorialized in the psyche of the American character.  To resist healing is unhealthy, but not to remember is inexcusable.