Ten Years of Funerals

One of the first things I ever did for the Lower Manhattan construction website for which I write was cover the first anniversary of 9/11.

I worked among five other communications professionals, but I was the only one who went downtown for that heavy day. Security was tight, but I had a special entry in place through our City Hall connections. After all, the website was created especially for and about all-things-rebuilding. 

I remember meeting a married couple down in “the pit” (as we affectionately called our place of business). The woman told me about her brother, a firefighter who perished 365 days prior and on the same ground where we stood.

I humbly took the couple’s photo, her facing me, her husband with his back to me to show the t-shirt they had made in their brother’s honor. They were sad, but seemed to have a grip on it. They appreciated the commemoration, but were not using it as a reason to tear open the wound again and re-feel the incomparable loss of the actual day.  Many commemoration participants were like that. There were tears, but it was a kind of closure.

Then the same thing happened the next year. Another ceremony to mark the day, with nearly 3,000 names being read, this year by parents of the victims (in Sept. 2002, it was their children reading their names).

The north Memorial pool with the Freedom Tower 

I wept. I relived 9/11/01. I couldn’t believe that I was sitting there hearing yet again about all the pain caused by terrorism, and propaganda about our precious freedom. Yes, propaganda – because how free are we if we limit some people’s rights while exalting others’? (Gays and lesbians, immigrants, blue-collar workers, pot smokers – yes, our freedom is limited.)

Is reliving the horrors and emotional assault on each of us really what they meant by “rebirth”?  Because to me it’s more like re-hashing.

Now we are here in the future. This weekend will bring the 10th anniversary of the attacks, of hijackings and violence, confusion and pain, the start of lifelong illnesses for victims and emergency responders – and it will also mark the 10th funeral for 2,977 people (plus 19 hijackers) who died that day, or because of that day. By the way, that’s only counting the direct deaths, not those whose 9/11-related deaths perhaps went un-memorialized.

I have many questions now, 10 years later:

Is the City of New York hosting these commemoration ceremonies because they’re afraid to forget what happened that day, and without a ceremony that is sure to happen?

Why do victims’ family members want to relive that pain every September?

Is fear driving this commemoration event, as in, fear of what people will think if NYC doesn’t put on a big show?

What are the benefits of having an annual funeral?

Are any family members outraged at the pressure to participate, lest the risk being deemed callous?

Why are those who died of 9/11-related deaths, whether physical, mental, or emotional illnesses, not also included in the ceremony? Are their deaths less significant because they weren’t literally at the WTC?

OK, I can understand why a major 10th anniversary event is warranted.  But I do not see why funerals number two-through-nine were necessary.

This year, I had wanted to be there for the anniversary event. I lobbied my bosses for a media pass, as had been previously granted.

Instead of giving me permission to be there, however, the agency I work for decided it would be better to send someone from their own office (not a humble ‘consultant’ like me; after all, my nine years of writing about the WTC site doesn’t matter much to New York State bureaucrats, devoted to the chain of command and to firing people six months before their pension can kick in). 

The agency guy who will attend instead of me will take soft-focus photos and sketch ink drawings and make wee watercolor works – for he balances his inner arteest with his directorship. Agency guy will likely not speak to another soul, nor take a single written note, nor write an article about the day, nor even draft captions for his non-investigative photography.

And I will stay home, witnessing my 9/11/11 from my window to Lower Manhattan and via NY1. And I will probably wonder why I ever wanted to be part of the funereal festival in the first place.

The south pool of the new National 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center

Entitlement

I enter a packed bus heading home from downtown Brooklyn. A dozen more people are jamming on. We all have bags and bulky coats. I try to squeeze my way through the people standing and see that not one, not two -- but FOUR different women have decided it's totally fine to sit on the outside of the two-seat bench seats.

Why? Is it that much of an inconvenience to just take the wall seat? Are they really getting off next, two stops from where the bus originated?  People are looking, lusting after those empty seats, but no one's bothering the rude-ass ladies who are blocking them.  Finally I can't take it anymore and go to the nearest one. "Can I sit there?"  She's on her phone, but huffily complies.

I scoot next to the wall, and feel her trying to jam her big ass and marshmallowy down coat back into the bus' outer bucket seat. I know she's got at least half a cheek falling off as she keeps pressing into me. I feel happy that I'm not the one hanging off the edge of the seat -- super-satisfied that I'm sitting for my mile-long ride home that I know will arrive before this jerkstore's stop. I almost want to thank her for giving me the cushy inside seat.

But then, if I said anything it would erupt into a fight faster than her smacking her condescending mouth at me and what she would probably deem my white privilege.

This is what the women of Brooklyn are like when they're in self-entitlement mode.  The bus is their primary domain, and anyone who tries to encroach on their space risks their wrath. They are quick with the rude comments and ugly attitude, seeming ever-ready to form a fist.

I do not understand it -- esp. why it's particularly acid on the buses that traverse the Fulton Street Mall -- yet it's the most consistent part of my commute.  I do encounter such entitled women elsewhere in the city -- in fact once I bumped into one on a crowded downtown sidewalk at rush hour, and she responded "I ought to punch you in the fucking face."  Luckily (yes, luckily) I was in a crappy mood that day and threw it right back -- "Do it!" - and she kept on walking.  If I hadn't been in that mood I might have just said "sorry" and felt lame the rest of the day.

The rage rises fast in New York...oh city of vicious competition and deteriorating transit!

More to come on this topic, as more outrage bubbles up.  Because once upon a time I had sympathy and modesty...but I've learned by example, and now I have a growing sense of entitlement.

Macho, Macho Man

Among the abundant flights my emotions take me on, here is one uncontrollable knee-jerk reaction that I may hate the most: Despising certain people upon sight, and for no sellable reason.

Unfortunately, one of those people—OK, there’s more than one but I’ll just take this one as the prime example—attends some of my same regular meetings. He is a tall chubby young bald man with the face of a boy and demeanor of a pubescent. He wears baggy jeans and ballcaps to office meetings, cradles both a Blackberry and an iPhone, and does the big-hand handshake with the cop and the oversized city planner he usually nestles in between. He sits with his legs spread wide like he’s giving birth to a wife-abusing super-bowl football, and talks deep-voiced about street infrastructure to back up that he’s a professional engineer…though really he’s clown in hardhat clothing.

See what I mean?  Nowhere in this rant will you find an actual reason to loathe him. Guys like him are a dime a dozen. I guess that’s part of why I hate him even more for being recently engaged—because men who are this stupid shouldn’t be singled out by any woman enough to marry.  Apart from the engagement, I can surmise that the bride-to-be also must be a dolt to be able to tolerate him, as we all overlook the premature hair loss and steadily inflating spare tire. I hear their ceremony is going to be in a reception hall on the south shore of Long Island. How enchanting. You can almost hear the Buttafuoco family applauding for them over open-bar bottles of Bud Light (for men) and rum-and-cokes (for the ladies).

 

I think it is a mutual disdain. I can’t have this much hatred for someone without it coming out of my pores, and he has sat next to me a few times before. Of course, a key trait of male cluelessness is that short-haired women go unnoticed. So then, I guess it’s my secret.