remembering Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Photo: L. Weikel

Shying Away

If you are shying away from the inevitable commemorations and wall-to-wall coverage that will be taking place over the next several days (especially on Saturday), I’m with you. And I’ll admit it: there’s a part of me that feels a little guilty about my visceral desire to avoid revisiting that horrific event.

That’s why I’m the first one to confess how shocked I am that I’m rushing to get this post written. Why? Because I’ve been immersed in the MSNBC special Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11. It is well worth your time.

We All Cope Differently

Everyone deals with the unthinkable in their own way. I’m not one for hashing and rehashing trauma and tragedy. That’s not to say that I don’t see the value in it for others. Sometimes we need to see and replay what we experienced because it was too shocking in the moment to comprehend. I get that. Believe me, I’ve hashed and rehashed some of my own traumatic moments. But over the years, it’s often felt to me like our honoring of 9/11 was exploitive.

The attacks on 9/11 not only inflicted devastating wounds on thousands of people personally, they also ripped away a lot of illusions we held as a country, leaving us feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable and afraid. Airing repeated images of the devastation only picked those scabs and made us bleed, year after year.

Transmuting the Pain

My personal preference is not to relive those excruciating hours of disbelief, fear for loved ones, and uncertainty about, well, everything. I would rather focus on transmuting the heartache into greater understanding and solidarity. I feel this was a huge missed opportunity as both our country and the world came together immediately afterward.

Indeed, it’s probably fair to say the unbelievable horror and loss (on so many levels) of that day and its aftermath – both short and long term – changed most of us. Indeed, I have to wonder if our focus on vengeance instead of understanding was the poisonous seed that, in its sprouting, has led to the rending of our hearts and our country.

Perspective and Story

My belief in the power of speaking and writing our truth is unshakable. I’m particularly fond of the written word because it is so accessible to all of us and also gives us the opportunity to go back and reflect upon what we’ve written after time has intervened. It’s through the telling of our stories that we effect that transmutation of our pain and transformation of our lives.

The artistic and healing project represented by Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11 is powerful, heartfelt, and hopeful. I’m glad I watched it. It’s soulful and poignant and personal, and gives us all a unique perspective into the varied experiences of those who were right there and how their lives have been transformed by that fateful day.

Lightning – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-79)

Norah Claire Guerke – my great niece; Photo: A. Guerke

Moments and Memories

I know there are certain members of my family who, right this moment, are ever so slowly, achingly, marking the minutes and hours of their lives now – tonight and into tomorrow, in particular – as they remember and relive those same moments that unfolded exactly a year ago.

This marking of seminal moments in our lives, this remembering each second and minute as precisely as we can (even though our experience of them may have been blurred by the impossibility and horror of what was unfolding as it was happening) is inevitable. It is, I suspect, a sacred ritual that happens universally. It is an honoring; a witnessing of what was. A ritual of remembrance and cherishing.

As I think about my eldest nephew and his wife, my niece, I know they are remembering the last hours they had with their little girl, their daughter who was only 110 days old. They are remembering, as best as they can, the way that last evening they spent with her unfolded. The feel of her hand gripping their fingers as they held her on their laps, laughing, their family watching tv and just being together on a Friday night. Remembering her almond shaped eyes and wise little smile; her baby smell. They’re recalling the irreplaceable feeling of cradling her in their arms as they took her upstairs. How they placed her gently in her crib that night and tiptoed out of her room, never imagining – at that moment –what lay ahead.

We do this. As humans, we replay those moments. We both savor them and allow them to torture us in the exquisite way love does.

I know they’ve been dreading this ‘anniversary’ for weeks. It seems impossible, in some ways, that a year has passed. The pain of their loss is so deep, so take-your-breath-away awful, that it often feels like it happened only yesterday. And yet, a year has passed. There is a difference to the pain.

A Testament to Our Love

We think it won’t change. There’s a part of us that vows it won’t. Somehow, even the thought of our searing pain becoming anything less than that driven-to-the-edge-of-madness-and-despair that’s engulfed us feels like a betrayal. We tell ourselves that we will never forget. We will honor and carry that pain as a testament to our love.

But then we realize, yes; the pain does shift. It must. It takes on a different color, a different hue.

As they are noting each peaceful series of ‘lasts’ tonight, and then tomorrow, marking each excruciating step in the process of losing their precious Norah, they are honoring her. They are honoring their journey, as well. And through this ritual of marking the moments and honoring the memories, they will feel an almost imperceptible sense of relief.

As this weekend passes, and they tick off each moment, each memory, they will begin to sense an almost intangible – yet undeniable – lifting of the overwhelming heaviness that has been the cloak of grief weighing down every step they’ve taken over the past year. Perhaps only the weight of a feather will be removed; but if they pay attention, they will feel it.

Rituals of Remembrance

And that is Norah’s gift. It is the gift that each of our loved ones gives us when they’ve left us behind, wondering how we’ll cope without them, how we’ll manage to make it through even one more minute, one more hour, one more day without them.

They witness our rituals of remembrance and cherishing, and their love and our love somehow meet and merge and cause a slight breeze to wash over us, like the breath of a kiss, swirling away a little bit of that stone cold heaviness that threatened our own will to live.

We think we’re dishonoring their memory to allow the searing pain to shift into a different expression. There’s a part of us that swore we’d never let them down; never lose that edge. But they want us to. They want us to live on, remembering them – and celebrating that we had that time together in this lifetime.

Love never dies.