"So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart."
- Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States of America
His voice was barely audible. If it were not for the microphone stubbornly stuck too high for a man of his diminutive stature he may never have been heard at all. The first few sentences finally floated from the podium over the clink of empty champagne flutes on silver trays. Quiet soaked into the cavernous corners of Manhattan's Cipriani.
There is a difference in the sound when people speak about that which causes them great grief, and the recognition of that difference gives pause to everything else around it. Grief seeps through an under amplified microphone, through a language barrier, past economic dividing lines, political persuasions, generations and educations. The joys of life are vast and unique. They may be celebrations of birth, life, love, success or hundreds of other causes. Grief is nothing more than one simple catalyst. Loss.
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| Robert Peraza kneeling before his son's name. |
His name is Robert Peraza. He spoke of his son Rob, a handsome 30 year old commodities trader for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Rob's picture fades into a photograph of Robert Sr. that was captured unbeknownst to him when he found his son's name at the memorial.
Through a thick accent heavy with sadness he cried "I LOVE THIS COUNTRY." Then he explained how he left Cuba for the United States and built a quintessentially good American life for his family. But it was so important for him to help us understand that we all as Americans share in his grief and that profound sense of loss that unites us. We may not have directly lost someone we loved on 9/11 but we lost something we loved. Maybe it was security we lost, or the illusion of invincibility, or the knowledge that another person lost their son, daughter, sibling, or spouse. But we all lost that day.
Robert was the first speaker of the evening at the 9/11 Memorial Fund gala I attended on September 4th of 2012. Since I have returned home I haven't fully answered people about what the event was like to attend. I have found it difficult to relate the experience into words that were appropriate for the situations in which they were asked. It is easy to relate the fun parts, which there were many. Conversations and cocktails with celebrities, icons of industries and politicians made for easy fodder to talk around the real reason we all gathered there.
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| Photo: Susan Geissler | 9/11 Memorial Site |
I kept being brought back to the same feeling I had on that morning 11 years ago. I had trouble eating my amazing dinner. I cried more than I wanted to but no more than the strong New Yorkers around me (and a Fort Worthian or two). We left into the night having been united, albeit in collective grief, as Americans ready to rebuild and fight for that which we hold so dear.
On Wednesday morning Amy, a wonderful member of
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation, gave us a private tour of the grounds of the memorial and also the impending museum that will be located there. It was raining heavily as we walked out of the family center, and it seemed so fitting to watch the water wash over the names of the lost.
She and I talked about being in New York after 9/11. We both worked in the city and therefore were surrounded by the scores of the walking wounded, the broken-hearted, the fearful, and the brave. She said the thing that struck her most of those moments were "that we started talking to each other again." I saw that too in those times and it has lasted. When the Twin Towers were cracked apart that morning the fabric of American life was torn with it. But we have proven with every hand that etches over a name that we were not irrevocably torn asunder. It is that which continues to give me hope.
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
- John Donne
[Special big wonderful thank you to Mr. Jimmy Jenkins for letting me be his guest for this event. Jimmy, you are one of a kind and a dear, dear friend.]
