Journeys of the Questress - WTC
Yahrzeit
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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

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Yahrzeit
Once again the calendar returns us to that tragic day. Once again the sun shines brightly on an end of summer morning. 9/11 has returned and with it all our memories and all our sorrows of a day like none other in the history of this nation. Ground Zero has been cleared of all debris. Nothing but bedrock and dust remain.
 
Between moments of silence, a multitude of sorrowful hearts descended into the Pit to lay flowers, collect some of the dust, and contemplate the 2 symbolic water filled squares. Young voices read the names of the dead and missing while the living held on to each other and cried. Politicians read poetry as ordinary citizens sought out the holes in the fences around the site, the closest they were allowed to be near this hallowed ground.
 
By noon the names, having all been read, Ground Zero returned itself to the tourists. No President arrived to hug the grieving in the Pit, no further coverage on TV, no special ceremonies were planned. Towns who had lost their citizens held their own private services. The day returned to the "new normal." At 7:15 the Towers of Light once again were beamed into the sky. If you weren't at certain vantage points, that too, went unnoticed.
 
Are we slowly slipping further away from this tragedy? Is 9/11 (or what has now been christened "Patriots Day") going to become like another Presidents Day: Marked on our calendars, trivially remembered, the original meaning lost? If the first anniversary had too much media rehashing of images and stories about the World Trade Center and 9/11, then this anniversary had too little. Only a few television specials that week, this morning's memorial ceremony left much to be desired, and nothing of note the rest of the day. Are we letting the people who were not directly affected forget too soon?
 
Why couldn't us common Joes and Janes be allowed to enter Ground Zero's Pit in the afternoon? Why couldn't there have been a huge memorial concert in Central Park and Yankee Stadium? Why couldn't all the major TV networks have shown at least 1 hour of tasteful memorial programming in prime time? We do more on Thanksgiving day!
 
Yes, life must go on. We must attend to our responsibilities, show up at our jobs, hold our meetings, make sure the economy doesn't falter. But we do not have the luxury of forgetting. Because on 9/11/2001 we all lost something, be it a person, a place or our national innocence. We must beware, that which is suppressed in individuals or our collective memory has a way of rising sometime in the future like the monster under the bed.
 
What we need is to create each year is a "Yahrzeit". A " 'Yeartime' in Yiddish...( meaning) a ritual time of year... to return to the origin of mourning, to recall the first day of the beloved's loss and reenter a period of sorrow."  Lisa Schamess goes on to say in her article "Widow's Walk: A Year's Journey Through Grief" posted to Beliefnet.com www.beliefnet.com/story/98/story_9895.html "Yarhzeit creates a frame for what will happen anyway: the slant of light, the change in weather, the simple trigger of a birthday or other nearby anniversary throws us back in time anyway. Yahrzeit is the permission to stay and feel the hurt of love's death, but also a time to act on the gift that love was in the first place, to restore our joy in life if we can, to celebrate and commemorate, to give, to light a candle's flame."
 
We have 364 days to live our "normal" lives. For one day each year, just as Daniel Libeskind's  proposed "wedge of light" would shine onto the site, we should focus on the meaning of 9/11 - what it means to each of us personally and to the Nation as a whole. 
                                                                                   c2003 Leona M Seufert