It’s as if you never left

Posted September 10th, 2006 by Michelle

I just watched part of “60 Minutes” tonight, where Katie Couric was interviewing rescue workers from 9/11 who are now getting sick in staggering numbers. Doctors on the show were saying that they are very concerned that the workers were going to develop cancer, considering the contaminants in their- or I should say our- bodies. I could only watch about fifteen minutes of the show, and I’ve been systematically avoiding all of the other 9/11 shows that have been on all day and will continue through tomorrow. I read that a CBS station was going to play all of their broadcast from 9/11, starting at 8:30 AM tomorrow morning and ending at midnight. I have to wonder who actually has the stomach to watch it. It’s not that I’m not moved by these shows- it’s not that I don’t think they are important or necessary. Nor do I think that we as a society shouldn’t continue to memorialize that day. We need to. But- and I’ve been trying to put this to words all day- I can’t watch. In the words of a song that only come within a stone’s throw to describing how I feel about this, “How am I supposed to remember you when you won’t let me forget?”

I don’t feel all precious about my particular pain surrounding those events. And I know how important it is, particularly for the vast majority of Americans who weren’t there, and even more so for people who lost loved ones on that day, to have organized remembrances and memorials and TV shows. I understand the “We Will Never Forget” banners and t-shirts. But I caught about four minutes of “Flight 93” on the tele by accident and it sent me into a tailspin. Five years and I still just can’t watch. “We Will Never Forget” belabors the obvious.

I know that terrible things happen to people all the time, that mothers and brothers and friends and lovers die in the most awful ways, every single day, all around the world. But what the people on those airplanes and in the WTC and Pentagon went through that day is still too much for me to process. And I wonder, does anyone else feel like I do? Does anyone else dread tomorrow? I’m sure they do, I know they do, but I don’t know how many of us are in northern California, and I feel terribly cut off from my home.

I’m lucky, in a way: my time at Ground Zero was limited. Weeks instead of months, and much of it at a warehouse that was probably far enough away that I wasn’t breathing the most poisonous air for very long. But I am part of the 9/11 health registry and I’m curious how the health of all of us will progress. I don’t have the energy to go on a rant about the lack of adequate government funding for illness treatment for 9/11 rescue workers. But it reminds me that I want to live the crap out of my life, not just because something as horrid as 9/11 could REALLY happen to me, but because sometime down the line, my life might be altered by what is trapped in my lungs.

I just wish that tomorrow I could be in New York, not to do anything special, but just to be there and go to work and work hard and come home to be with my family, both chosen and blood. Maybe one of the reasons I dread tomorrow is that it is a reminder of the time that has passed since I discovered what I wanted my life to look like. I know, in many ways, I’ve been working towards that goal, but it’s a reminder that I’ve got a lot more work to do to make it really happen.