Remembering September 11th

As I drove into work this morning, with a light rain falling, I listened to a live radio broadcast of the memorial service at Ground Zero.

There was something almost defiant in the sound of the bagpipes and drums. As if to say, "the dead are laughing at you today Osama bin Laden, and so are we the living."

September 11th marked a turning point in my thinking. The senseless death and destruction, the snuffing out of so many good people and their hopes and dreams, the bizarre photograph of one unknown man falling upside down to his death, inverted my sentimental Catholic spirituality and my life.

September 11th reawakened within me the suppressed memories of my mother's grim death from a cancerous brain tumor at 48; the first time that "God's plan" created personal problems for me. Before that, the banality of evil was other people's problem, and just an abstraction for me.

Like the victims of 9/11, my mother had hopes and dreams. She struggled to find the time to do creative, intellectually stimulating things, despite the crushing responsibilities of her life with eight children. It seemed to me that she was on the verge of breaking out in that direction when she died. Did God care? I don't know for sure, but to a mere foolish mortal, it seemed not.

Since 9/11, I have meditated heavily on the apparent futility of human aspiration. Does death make all human striving mere self-deception and vanity? I think it keeps me from composing half the great pieces of music I have in my head, and writing and shooting the screenplays that dance around in this imagination I inherited from my mother.

I have imagined God not caring about my mother's aspirations, or the victims of 9/11, or the victims of the Tsunami, or Katrina, or the countless people who die silently, too young, in hospitals each day. I am guarded about enjoying my life too much, for fear that just when I truly relish the beauty of my own four children, I will be made the ultimate cosmic fool and struck down. Or worse, that they will be struck down.

When my father, a former New York City firefighter, died at 60, of a sudden, massive stroke, we sat vigil outside of his room at Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, N.Y. The Yankees were on the television. I could see the faces of people at the game, enjoying themselves. They were unaware of the terrible thing that was taking place. It takes place thousands of times every day, all around us. Just miles from the ballpark, or the restaurant, in the hospital, or at the nursing home up the hill.

My parents' children today are writers, musicians, painters, scientists and teachers. They take after my creative, cerebral mother that way. They take after their father in revering the New York City fire department. Our father taught us firsthand about the courage the job requires. He worked with the first responders of 9/11 for many years in Brooklyn. He also represented them in the firefighters' union. I shudder to think what he would have felt had he lived to see that dark Tuesday in September.

I wish I could be at Ground Zero today. People there are likely feeling a connection with the transcendent. I have often thought that I should take one day off from work to go look for such a sacred place, where I might find a key to sorting out the things that began to trouble me so deeply, just six years ago.