I know this will upset many Americans. It’s not my intention to do so, but I can’t keep quiet because, frankly, I just want to scream:
“IT’S BEEN FIVE YEARS. GET OVER IT!”
Five years, and they’re still searching for human remains at the site of the 9/11 attacks in Manhatton.
Tonight, NBC Nightly News reported that human remains are being unearthed, but not the odd arm or leg, or even a finger. It’s tiny fragments – part of a finger nail; a microscopic splinter of bone – that can be tested and identified using DNA technology, but to what purpose?
Why is it so important to Americans that five years on they still wait to be told, “We identified this fragment as being from your husband……..or wife……or Uncle George.”?
Many from other countries died in the tragedy, including 67 British citizens, 23 Japanese, and lesser numbers from 34 other nations. Their loved ones have come to terms with the loss, are beginning to pick up the pieces, not wait around for confirmation of a fact glaringly obvious to them already – that their husband, or wife, or Uncle George died on 9/11/2001.
An argument is presently in progress regarding some battered stone steps on the site, down which some of those attempting to escape may have passed. Relatives want them left intact, presumably because their husband’s, wife’s, or Uncle George’s feet just possibly may have touched them.
It’s turned crazy.
America, five years later, is still clinging to its grief; refusing to let go; wanting to hang on – to nothing. There is nothing tangible left worth finding. If my wife had died on 9/11 I wouldn’t want to be told five years later, “This is a bit of her finger nail.” It would do nothing for me. Empty words, for it wouldn’t even be recognizable as anyone’s fingernail.
The time to move on is now. Fill in the site, erect a suitable memorial, and leave the dead to the ground and the living to get on with their lives.
Perhaps then, as well as the grief, some of the hate may begin to fade also.
Filed under: Too long to grieve