My 9-11 memory this year, has nothing to do with memorializing those who died in the past. Honoring, remembering and meshing their lives to our own is an essential element of what is human. Our mortality is a given. Yet, my 9-11 present is that a good friend lies struggling for her life in a NY hospital, dying of cervical cancer. She's 41 years old - the same age as I. She has two wonderful children with her husband - who is one of my oldest and best friends, ages 5 and 9.
Is her struggle and that of her family and friends, any less noble, or worthy of remembrance than the senseless deaths 12 years ago?
We cannot forget that someone's mother, father, child, grandparent, sister, brother, friend, dies every day. Sometimes they are lucky enough to have lived a full life - just as often, they are not. Death is not reserved for special events & the sensationalization of death belittles that reality.
This is why war is, in essence, the violence of mass dehumanization. It steals the meaning of death by devaluing it - ripping it from the context of a life lived, rendering it a casualty of circumstance... A casualty that then becomes 'memorialized', or worse, praised.
On this 9-11, I remember the times we shared during the summer of 2001 when her husband was mixing the afternoon live music in that Plaza, before that Plaza was no more. I remember the life and vitality and spirit she showed every day of her life that I've known her. I hope that somehow she can pull through and have more time with her family and friends.
And if she dies, I want to celebrate her life, not her death.