American lives lost were not given voluntarily
If you were fortunate, you were able to walk past the 3,000 or so miniature U.S. flags sticking straight up from the soil outside the Russell House last Thursday.
These flags represented the innocent lives taken from their families and their friends 13 years ago on that day.
They were a mixed metaphor. Small markers in the ground were reminiscent of graves. The thick stem and bright colors were reminiscent of flowers in full bloom.
Also, the flags were not specified by name. Each flag could represent one of the dead, or all of them.
I stood on the edge of the field, staring at them flutter for some time.
The following were some of my thoughts as I watched the flags:
First: I don’t want to seem flippant, but we should remember that not all of those murdered were Americans. Many of those killed were from other countries, including the U.K., India and South Korea.
Even so, this shouldn’t trouble us too much. After all, it was Jean-Marie Colombani, the French writer of "Le Monde," who famously wrote, “We are all Americans!” the day after.
It is important to remember that 9/11 was an international tragedy. It was as if the kind of kid who cuts open small animals became God for a day. It could affect anyone in any place.
That internationalist sentiment would last for a while longer.
As those events recede from our ever-more distant memory, the absence of the people on those planes and in those buildings becomes more pronounced.
13 years of not being there for birthday parties, poetry recitals, coffee shops. 13 years of children unborn (empty third-grade chairs, empty cubby-holes, empty clothes). 13 years of music unplayed and unheard.
13 years in a more empty, more quiet world.
Also important to remember: the people on those planes were not martyrs — a term we tend to use with reverence, even now.
They did not get on those planes ready to die for anything or anyone. The most they were prepared for was, perhaps, the misery of airplane food and uncomfortable seating.
By being trapped in the top of a burning building and choosing to jump, they were not defending a national ideal.
They did not “give their lives” in the way soldiers are said to do. Their lives were taken by those men who were willing to "give their lives."
Those are people who were martyrs and are remembered as martyrs.
The possible exception being, of course, those passengers of United 93, who were willing to risk, not give, their lives to prevent the unthinkable: the destruction of the White House or Congress. They tried to keep the plane in the air after taking control of the cockpit. They didn't want to die.
The best words written on this subject were written four days after 9/11 by the English writer Ian McEwan: his “Only love and then oblivion” column was published in The Guardian.
In unmatched prose, he recounts that of the hundreds of phone calls made from the victims to their loved ones ended in “I love you.”
“She said it over and again,” he writes of one victim trapped in the WTC. “Before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones, from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There is only love, and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.”
All of this came to me watching the flags.
The last thought I had, standing there as the sky slowly lost its light and dark came on in its fullness, was of the person who would come and pick up all of those flags and pile them in their shifting thousands into some metal-and-diesel vehicle.
Then I wiped my face, kicked the dirt off of the bottom of my shoe, and decided that class was worth going to.