Boxes....

  Let's face it, we're a live in the now kind of nation.  We mourn and we grieve as a collective and then we all take a pause and everyone moves on to the next incident designed to inspire a detached sort of melancholic solidarity in that fast food way that our world functions in.  It's happening with 9-11 I fear.  The bad guys have receded to the shadows in our minds.  The site where the towers once were are trying to flourish under the guise of something oh so corporate and oh so New York.

  I guess it's the cycle of life taking precedence.  In death their is grief but the social contract seems to limit the shelf life on mourning.  We, as humans of the planet, we live by a contract in which the healing process requires the survivors to pack up the life of the person that they loved into a box in the storage of their hearts and or their sub conscious.  I didn't lose a brother or a lover on 9-11.  I didn't experience the pain of losing someone and having to deal with the realization that a proper good bye will never be possible.  But, having lost someone very close and very special to me, I know about the contract and that clause about moving on.  I'm betting that someone woke up today and asked why the loved ones of the 9-11 victims haven't moved on.  I bet someone read up the paper or watched the news and commented that it's been twelve years.  Twelve years, why ring bells and call out names?   I know that someone thought it if they didn't say it out loud.  In grief, there is no statute of limitations.  After all of the pomp and circumstance fades and after all of the partisan posturing stops and after Hollywood gets through using one of America's darkest days as a marketing prop for some A listers political idealism, it's just the survivors left standing.  Contrary to the old saying, time doesn't all heal wounds.  It''s not like the movies, where everyone reaches the key point of the plot and the emotional epiphany leads to the clarity that leads to the happy ending. For most of the 9-11 survivors who lost loved ones on that fateful day, they've packed up the boxes and they've taken that trip to the addict or wherever we put our grief so can we move on or move forward or whatever the fucking cliche is these days.   I guess what I'm saying is, don't be so hard on the ones that need to remember.  Don't be so hard on the ones that haven't done their required packing job yet.  Some people need to relive the shittiest days of their lives just to prove that they can feel.  I know because I'm one of em.  I guess it goes for all creatures that are grieving a loss of some kind.  Give them their space.  Let them ring bells, let them remember.  Don't bury them in cliches or self help scripture.  Most importantly, don't talk to someone whose grieving in generalities like time.  Time doesn't apply to the families who lost loved ones on 9-11 or anyone else for that matter.  Hopefully no whose reading this will have to experience the shitty deal that comes with losing someone.  You give your heart to someone, you come to know them as a part of your orbit and then you're simply supposed to paint over that portion of your life for the sake of normalcy, whatever the fuck that is.