Journeys of the Questress - WTC
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 1
Home
The Way it Was - 1
The Way it Was - 2
Sept 19 - When Tomorrow Never Comes
Sept 27 - Oral Interpretation
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 1
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 2
Oct 5 - A Mile of Tears - Part 3
Oct 11 - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Oct 28 - Each Day I Search the Rubble
Nov 12 - When Spires Fall
Nov 19 - 911 The Rape of America
Dec 14 - Just A Thought
Dec 18 - A Sense of Place
Feb 2 - Final Pass to the End Zone
March 3 - Sitting on the Edge
March 14- Do You Still Remember
March 20 - Virtual Walk-Through
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 1
March 25 - When Will It End - Part 2
April 1 - Towers of Light
May 14 - View From Above
May 30 - Tunnel At the End of the Light
May 31 - Seventeen Hundred
Aug 9 - From the Margins Erased
Aug 30 - The Train Doesn't Stop There Anymore
Sept 9 - Ceremonies of Light and Dark
Sept 10 - Just An Anniversary
Sept 12 - September Holds Great Promise
Literary Reflections
Rebirth and Resurrection
The Winter Garden Springs To Life
The Winter Garden Springs To Life - con't
Underpass to the Past
Rebuilding Ground Zero
Under Hallowed Ground
Borders
Yahrzeit
What Will Fill the Void?
I Submit a Design
Footprints in the Dust
My Memorial Design Submission
My Memorial Design - Drawings
New Path Train Station
Path Station Tour
May We Never Forget
That Which Surives
War Without End
4th Anniversary
Footprints in the Dust
Void
I Miss 9/11
Time Comes Between Us
A Thousand Cranes
Fear Factor
Love Letters On The Wall
Empty Chairs
Sitting on the Edge of Forever
Walking the Perimeter of Emptiness
A Counting of Days
For Friends Absent But Not Forgotten
Stigmata
The Memory Keeper's Promise
Unbreak My Heart
Standing On The Edge Of Forever
Both Sides Now
A Memory In Time
The Gravity of Loss
The Survivors Rise Up
Flowers Will Bloom
The Fire Within Us
The Sentinel
Stronger Than The Storm
Between the Candle and the Stars
Ghosts
A Journey Through Remembrance
Canticle of Remembrance
Beyond the Crucible of Chaos
Journey Through Remembrance project
What See We Now
Forever In Our Hearts
Keeping the Flame Alive
The Rebuilding of Ground Zero continues
Does Anyone Care Anymore?
Where Is Our Story Teller of Pain
At Memory's Edge
Dust Thou Art and to Dust Thou Shalt Return
7x7x70
Heroes Never Die
The Flame Inside Our Hearts
The Year of the Heroes of 9/11
Déjà Vu
Remembering 9/11 in the year of COVID-19
Coronavirus Decimates Ailing Sept. 11 Responders
Touching From a Distance
That Which Survives 20 years later
2021 - 20 years later
Memories of Terror Return
Putin's Name Covered Over On Teardrop Memorial
The 9/11 Tribute Museum Closes
When Memories Fade Away
St. Nicholas at Ground Z is rebuilt
The Blue Wall of the Unidentified Victims
When Time Calls Your Name
When Art Gets It All Wrong

wtcbanner2.jpg

When Will It End

 
 
Last night I did a 'virtual walkthrough' again. A single word 'Path train'
started the snowball effect. My mind's eye visualized the now buried WTC
Path train station, I walked it's length remembering the many times I sat
there waiting for a train. I took the escalator to the next level of shops.
To the store where I purchased Plushy the large beanie turtle in 2000. And
so it continued until I had revisited the entire WTC site, in my head, as it
was, as it will never be again.
 
I wanted to stop the visualization but couldn't. It took on an emotional
life of its own. And that is how I feel these days, 6+ months after the
Towers crashed. The WTC disaster has taken on a life of its own. I can't
stop it, the images are everywhere. Our Nation, our days, our news, our
advertisements, our lives, are permeated by artifacts and symbols of that
horrendous day. Like a virus, it invades our consciousness. And like
shrapnel stuck in my spine, it causes me continuing pain.
 
Over my lifetime I have seen many losses. Some as wrenching as the WTC
destruction. But all were self-contained. They were MY losses and in time
items, locations, etc. stopped triggering the flood of memory and emotions.
I could also escape. I could take myself physically elsewhere, where there
was nothing to trigger the memories, and thus take a 'breather'. But today
is different.
 
They said the world changed on Sept 11. How right they were. All the simple
and innocuous items of everyday life have taken on a totally new meaning.
Old Glory has ceased to be just a FLAG. She is now the symbol of a country's call
to arms. A constant reminder of 9/11. She is everywhere. I cannot escape
her. From my office space to the highway, to that stranger with that flag
pin coming at me down the street. Then there are the WTC widows: In the
news, in the magazines, in the TV shows, in an early morning news item about
an attempted mugging.....WTC WIDOW an adjective wrapped around the events.
My mind has been messed with when I even see the trooper who gave me the
speeding ticket in the same category as the NYC police - heroes - because he
wears a uniform! Heroes are everywhere. They are in toys, in slogans, on
billboards, in TV ads, in real life, in fiction. But they are not Superman
or Batman, they are firefighters and policemen and everyday businessmen who
climbed down 80 flights of stairs carrying a paralyzed woman on their back.
And each day another 'HERO' surfaces.
 
For many months, I too was caught up in the emotions of this Nation's loss.
I hungered each day to learn one more factoid about the day of the disaster,
see one more individual exhumed form Ground Zero, talk to one more person to
see what their experience of that day was like. But now I want to move on. I
want to heal. And I can't. I feel like I am buried beneath Ground Zero and
the rubble is the constant pressure of all these reminders. I want to escape
but to where? 
                   Continue with...