Thinking of You

On By Shayleene MacReynoldsIn creativewriting, travelblog

The only thing I couldn’t leave New York without seeing was the World Trade Center Memorial.  It’s worth the trip, for that alone.  Never have I felt such heartache as I did in that moment.  The grief living in those gaping holes is profound.  It’s staggering.  It will bring you to your knees.

It did not take long for the weeping to begin.  It set in, like a hand wrapped around my throat, constricting my airways, tightening the alveolar membranes—strong enough to choke upon.  The souls of thousands whisper to you with the powerful stream of water pouring down into great scars that mark the earth.

World, I hurt for you here.  As if my tears could ever do the work that so needs doing.  I wish they could.  I wish this mercy—this compassion—this outright love could heal the aching of our hearts.  But it falls short, each and every time.

A mother’s name was there.  Beside the cold carved words “Unborn Child.”  A thing like that makes it hard to stand at all.  A rose was in her name, to celebrate her birthday.  A white one.  For beauty, purity, and strength.  For innocence.  For new beginnings, and remembrance.  For reverence.  A white rose means, I’m thinking of you.  Always, always thinking of you.

Beside a grave like this, you feel small.  Smaller than you’ve ever felt before and you wonder at a tragedy so great that it brings nations to their knees.

You cannot love the dead.  You can love their memories, but only the living can receive the mercies of our hearts.  You can only love the souls who can respond to this great calling.  Perhaps, if we pulled up a little more of the good stuff from the gallows of our hearts, tragedies like this could be prevented.  Perhaps.

But not undone.  The works of anger, of cruelty, of hatred, cannot be reversed.  They can be built upon and covered up.  But not undone.  But this memorial didn’t build upon the anger.  It exposes it.  It shows the too often cruel aspects of our natures in the names that lie engraved in marble.

No, you cannot love the dead.  Not in the truer sense of what it means to love.  But we can adore the living, so that these crimes are never done again.  And that, my friends, is all I know.

25 thoughts on “Thinking of You”

      1. Coyote from Orion

        Hope you had a good break. Funny, I just put on Goats Head Soup which reminds me of California. I listened to this album all the way around Nevada and California on the only trip I’ve ever been on to the US. Maybe if I ever get to NY I will listen to Sticky Fingers or Satanic Majesty’s Request.
        It was night here when it happened. I had just got back from an unarmed combat class and I had a foreign policy lecture in the morning at the university. I knew that night that the world had just changed.

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          1. Coyote from Orion

            True. I am always grateful to hear other people’s feelings on the matter, and memories of course. I had turned my life around 2 years before from a train wreck. I had no one anymore still alive. The stopping drinking thing still only infuriates some all the more 18 years on. Lol
            Still it’s been a few years since someone had a red hot crack at the coyote. Sometimes it is just good to dance.
            Definitely a storm brewing. Take care Shayleene and look after your bloke. X

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            1. You live the life you need to live, and as long as it’s a good one, never mind what others think. Storm brewing, yes. The capacity to ride through it though–we have. Let’s just hope we can recognize that when the time comes. Be well Coyote.

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              1. Coyote from Orion

                Cheers. Only reason I lament is because at the end of my teenage years I was left with no social networks because of the hell I had survived. Those who were there for me and who could vouch it wasn’t cool or for attention all died. A lot of freedom to do anything when no one cares or is sticking around long enough to care. Pretty funny too when you tend to be pretty accurate about everything witnessed happening.
                12th house or Neptune in astrology is meditation and spirituality as much as it is other things… a beautiful world. With every second wind I can’t lose. Never felt so alive.
                Blessed be 🤣😹🦉🦉

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  2. That’s a visceral post indeed. And yes, if only we could honour all the dead, all over the world, who’ve died in similar tragedies, as the pain of loss gets passed down through generations, over and over… if only we could truly learn, and not repeat…

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