Every day is a milestone of some kind. September seems to hold three I pay attention to more than birthdays and other anniversaries. The first is on the 1st and reminds me of the start of WW II, or what would easily become WW II. I wasn't alive in 1939, but my parents were, and I start to imagine how the news of Hitler's invasion of Poland started to change their lives before they even knew what change was coming.
When the calendar hits September 1st I will forever start to recite lines from W.H. Auden's poem, September 1, 1939.
I've never tried to memorize the whole poem, but like the opening to Moby Dick, "I sit in one of the dives/On fifty-second Street," I can never forget the words.
I almost think I can tell which dive he was in, likely a narrow bar that you entered by stepping down a few shallow steps, passing through a second door that opened into a dark place that you could view the outside sidewalk from through a semi-cellar window. Shows up in lots of NYC movies. Those kind of places are pretty much gone now.
And the last line, "...Show an affirming flame." I used to refer to it when I needed some mental toughness to get through the workday and the effort it was taking to complete at least 30 years of employment so I could enjoy certain retirement benefits. (I did accomplish it, making it to 36 years.)
Of course Auden was reflecting on the invasion of Poland by Hitler. Hitler had already signaled his aggression by annexing the Sudetenland. Poland was the next lamb that was slaughtered.
The second is the 11th, the day I describe with black humor as the day Lower Manhattan became an airport; the Pentagon reported incoming, and a small town in Pennsylvania became the scene of on-board heroism. We are forever changed by that day. Try getting on an airplane if you don't believe me.
Twenty years. There's a lot that's part of my life now that wasn't here 20 years ago. The girls weren't yet married. The oldest had just graduated college; the younger one just in college. No grandchildren yet. The backyard didn't look as nice as it does now.
I was still working; now I'm retired 10 years. Certain health events hadn't yet happened, yet still ticking nicely, if not in some discomfort. The hair is whiter, and I don't run anymore. I wasn't yet married nearly 46 years, but I was married nearly 26 years.
Cosmo the cat hadn't yet become part of lives, entering in 2006; still purring, sleeping and eating like a cat does.
I once read a poem by Phyllis McGinley that pointed out how she had aged by pointing out how the things around her had aged. She was a favorite of Auden's.
I told my daughter Susan the other day I can fairly well remember every event that has transpired in the 20 years since 9/11. And certainly nearly every part of that day, even to the point of what sports jacket I was wearing and what I was thinking as the train entered the tunnel in Long Island City on my way in and the skyline disappeared.
I can remember the last thing on my computer screen before myself and my chair were pushed against the desk by the impact of the first plane hitting the building. We were on the 29th floor of Tower One, thankfully no higher. I was looking up someone who was using Oxycodone (I worked in fraud detection for BlueCross BlueShield.) in significant amounts and wondering how that scourge was still with us.
Twenty years later the Sackler family behind Purdue Pharma has made a settlement totaling $4.5 billion dollars for the damage they caused by their aggressive marketing efforts. Sort of like a humanitarian form of reparations that has still left them quite whole, and thousands of others quite dead.
Down the road no one is ever going to read any stories of the death of the last of the 9/11 survivors. There is no building manifest as there was a ship's manifest as to who was on the Titanic. The estimate is that 25,000 came out of the WTC towers alive, a hefty number considering what the place looked like when it collapsed and there were really no survivors once the steel frames gave in. Just DNA.
There is of course a list of who did perish, made even more poignant when you scan the names and read of an unborn baby and their mother not surviving. The named and unnamed.
And nineteen years. As for remembering everything since 2002 and the shootings at Empire BlueCross and BlueShield that left my manager and co-worker dead, and their assailant, a vice president, dead from suicide, nothing will dislodge the memory of that day. 9/11 is more like something I read about than experienced directly.
It's been a very eventful 20 years, and I suspect if at 72 I do not get to reminisce about another 20 years, I will get to do so for a portion, and who knows, maybe the full Monty.
Stay tuned.
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The dates on the stones let you measure the time
Of the lives that lived in between.
The bracketed years reveal to the current
The joys and the troubles they've seen.
On any given day a person is born
You can record the date of their birth.
And on any given day a person can die
And you can record that they've left this earth.
And the morning we made our dusty descent,
An accomplishment undiminished,
We learned of the others and their bracketed date,
And our own, that remained unfinished.
So it is incredible to believe the end can be met
At the hands of someone we knew.
He put an end to life, he put an end to himself,
But he didn't put an end to you.
Nineteen years. Still true.
No one ever dies
Who lives in hearts
Left behind.
These people left many things well begun.
And on 9/11 and 9/16, these people became memories.
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