I met my wife 117 days before 9/11. It was 20 days before I left for my first deployment. I’d known her for 201 days when she met me on the pier when we finally came home. We’d sent emails to each other from the opposite side of the world in the hours, days and weeks after the attacks. My communication with the outside was limited. And I chose her to write to. I barely knew her. But there was something about the way she talked about things that I needed more of. She wasn’t angry. She was just sad. She cried for people she didn’t know. I wasn’t sad. I was angry.
For twenty years now when this time of year comes around the same thing happens. She watches every media production on 9/11 she can find. It’s like a ritual. She hears every story. Some she’s heard dozens of times. She sits through the ridiculous retreads of documentaries.
How many ways can you slice the same morning open and lay the guts of us out to pick through?
Quite a few so far. And quite a few more to come I imagine. It’s not stopping. And she’ll watch every bit of it. She’s still not angry. She’s still sad. But she also finds something in the stories of heroism and humanity of that day.
I can’t watch. I’m still angry. All I see is failure. I remember the celebratory music I heard over the radio from the other ships in the Gulf that night. I remember the cheering. Fuck you America.
I chased Jihadists around the globe for a decade after. Whenever this time of year comes around I get angry again. I can’t believe we let them do it to us. And I can’t believe we did so many stupid things in response. We went to war in Afghanistan for 20 years and handed it back to the people who controlled it when the attacks were planned. We invaded Iraq. We created a cottage industry of warrior heroism for brands to build their identities off of. For politicians to attack the right people with. We broadened surveillance authorities. We let 19 men with box cutters bring our country to its knees. I’m still angry. And I can’t believe she still watches it.
This week I wandered out of my work from home office from time to time to catch my wife tearing up over someone telling their story of that day. The kids we’ve had since that day are all off at school. High school. Middle School. They’re not young any more. And neither are we. We live about a mile from the condo we moved into together when I came back from that deployment. We’ve lived through war and autism and the passing of loved ones. We’ve done so many hard things together. But I still can’t watch the crashes. It still makes me too angry. And she can’t not watch them.
The lesson of the last twenty years is hard for me to look away from. It’s found in the contrast between how my wife sees that day and how I do. For her, it’s not an attack. It’s a tragedy. Not much different from an earthquake or a hurricane. For her it’s not about what the men did to us. It’s about what happened to people that day. And what some people did in service to each other. Husbands. Wives. Fathers. Mothers. Children.
She doesn’t think about retribution. She’s got no scores to settle. The people who did it are already dead. They died first. The score was settled on that day. The rest is just human connection; feeling the pain of others as if it were hers. Seeing the triumph of heroism in the face of grave sacrifice. Triumph. Grief. Humanity.
I’m still angry. And that anger defines me. Without that day I’m not who I am. Without that anger I’m not who I am. Violence. Justice…both human institutions. Both mine.
Hers is love. Empathy…and grace. The divine.
There was a time when I thought that was a coward’s way of looking at it. That it was childish and the sort of naive thinking reserved for people who weren’t in charge of the safety of others. Those who know better don’t take these things lying down after all.
But what if we did? What if we just mourned the dead. What if we just celebrated the heroes. What if we put locks on the cockpit doors got better metal detectors and linked our intelligence reporting more effectively. And we just moved on. What if anger and vengeance weren’t the only thing that could unite us politically? What if we just took it for what it was. A tragedy that won’t ever happen again. What if we just let it go?
Where would we be? Better? Worse?
The two live together in me. And rightly so, in my mind. But the hatred that has grown is as great a tragedy. That cancer continues to eat away at our humanity.