***This post was originally published in Rebecca Soulette’s newsletter, Latte For The Soul, yesterday (Sept 11, 2011) but, at the request of a number of the subscribers, it’s now here too–a day late, but the sentiment is still the same!***

Today is my annual “don’t turn on the TV day,” because I REALLY don’t want to be sucked in to reliving Sept 11th over and over and over and over, from every conceivable angle and situation. Living through the original day and making my own peace with it was enough for me.

Every year, around this time, my friends and I have talks about whether all of this “reliving it” stuff is beneficial to us or not. I know that some people need it–especially many who lost loved ones or who had a particularly hard-to-heal day that day. And many folks who weren’t in NYC, DC, or PA appreciate being able to have a day to honor what a tough day it was.

But here’s what I have a problem with: the peer pressure that can result from this kind of  (forced) collective remembrance. Some people need to have a day to take time out of their lives to grieve or learn from the day. The media, of course, pounces on this, having story after story about “the lives that were ruined” that day and then runs with every hint that something devastating like that could happen again (which is *slightly* silly, since, at least here in NYC, they talk about that every day, so it’s not like it’s front page news).

But there are many of us who just want to have a good day–no tears, not polarizing nationalism or hatred of those who hate us. Some of us want to just get on with living the lives that, I’m sure, everyone who has EVER died would want us to be living.

Sadly, many people take our wanting to just have a normal, pleasant day as some kind of blasphemy.

Here’s the thing. I was here in NYC on Sept. 11th. I “get it.” I don’t want to relive the horror, shock and grief anymore. Once my shock and grieving periods were over, I learned that I would MUCH rather have a happy day than one that may just make me sad and give me nightmares.

Much like our country is divided into Republicans, Democrats, meat eaters, vegetarians,  baseball fans and opera buffs, I wish there was space for us to be able to spend this day as would be right for us, without incurring the wrath of anyone trying to judge whether or not we’re showing our solidarity to the USA or to our grieving brethren or not.

After my grandmother died, I spend the next bunch of years doing something to remember the day, on the day. I drove past her old house, I went back to the hospital where she passed, I took time to acknowledge, if not relive the day. These days, I still give the day a nod, and sometimes talk to people in my family about it. But I’ve thought about how my grandmother would have wanted for me to spend the day.

Here’s what I CANNOT imagine her ever saying, “I want you to ALWAYS remember the day that I die. I want you to stop everything, put your life on hold, relive the moment until you’re sick in the gut (reliving it many more times than I, the one who actually died did, mind you!), marinate in a pit of grief longer than you actually need to, and bite the heads off of anyone who isn’t respectful enough to want to be in that pit of despair with you. And then do it again every year for as long as you live. Don’t ever let the sadness go.”

Here’s what I CAN imagine her saying: “Well, Beck, I had to die sometime. I know you’re sad, but the last thing I would want you to do is spend an extra second on being sad. Once you’re feeling better, I want you to go out and HAVE FUN! I want you to live your life and fill it with people you love and enjoy them! The best way that you can remember me is to LIVE your life and have a WONDERFUL time!”

So that’s what I try to do. And that’s what I want for ALL of us: once we have grieved enough (and only we will know when that is!), I want us all to wake up in the morning and enjoy the day.

So that’s my wish for all of us–that for those of us who still need to grieve and process, do that. And for those of us who’ve completed that, that we go and have a wonderful, love-filled day and love-filled life. And that ALL of us can respect one another enough to simply concentrate on what we need for ourselves and know that what each of us needs may be different, and that’s okay.

If someone needs to be at ground zero today, they should be there. If someone else needs to skip town and go to an amusement park and not think about it, that’s exactly what they should do. My wish is that ALL of us know in the deepest recesses of our hearts, that as long as we’re all doing what’s best for ourselves and not inflicting it on anyone else, or judging anyone else for needing something different, then we’ll all heal when it’s time, and we can get back to the business at hand: loving one another.

Tags: Sept. 11th, September 11th

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