Here's what I shouldn't have said

"Ground Zero is not yours."

The rest of the post stands.

Comments

[Clio Bluestocking]

Actually, I think that statement reveals the most about the depth of your grief. You lived through an unimaginable trauma, so of course you feel that it is yours, that it is something close and private and painful, regardless of how public that event was. Also, that possesive ache is a way of memorializing the people lost. Somebody, YOU, remember and mourn. You don't want that feeling diluted because that seems like forgetting.

Then, someone comes along and seems trivialize that event and everyone that was gone. They seem to have turned the site into a freak show. So, of course you became infuriated; and, of course, being a writer, you wrote that fury. Anger is sometimes a very misunderstood emotion.

(If this isn’t too coherent, that’s because I was up way past my bedtime reading a certain person’s book.)

[Bill Scurry]

The "not yours" angle is justified, at least to those of us who work a block from the old WTC. Callous midwesterners with fanny-packs and ugly sandals grinning for photos outside the familiar wire-mesh fence surrounding the site trivialize the thing.

[Anne E]

stand your ground

[glowlita]

your ground zero, even

[ku nkiko]

Ditto.

[satia]

I concur. You are absolutely right. It is not yours. I can't even say that I have the right to the experience to the same degree as you because I was not there. Yes, I am from NYC. Yes, I remember a time before the WTC even existed. Yes, I felt it perhaps more intensely than those around me when it all happened living here in GA at the time.

When my friend Jenny was murdered one of the local news media had a guestbook that people could sign, leaving messages of consolation for the family. I thought it was invasive and exploitative. My friend was murdered and who were these strangers to share in my grief. Still, I knew that everyone has a right to feel and express their grief as they must and if leaving a comment in a guestbook somehow made these people feel more peaceful fine. Odds are most of them merely wanted to feel more relevent or a part of the horror of what happened.

It disgusts me in all its manifestations. I would like to believe that most of the people going to Ground Zero truly go to honor the memories . . . to stand in profound silence and recognize what an "us and them" mentality can and will create . . .

I am too old to believe so well of human nature and have little doubt that most of the people who go do so to take pictures they can take home to their families to show they were there.

I could write more. I won't. You have said it all and well. Silence is best.

[curiousgyrl]

I agree. Keep it in.

[LeOgAhEr]

I Love you girls

Buy