Generally, I don't understand public grieving for relatively distant tragedies. I am willing to bet that every sporting event held in the week following the shootings at Virginia Tech contained a moment of silence to...what? Respect the victims? Pray for the survivors? Consider our own mortality? Certainly, I understand the impulse to show solidarity in some way, but involving a high school basketball game halfway across the country (or the state) seems somehow disrespectful to me. It's hard to say until you're there, but I think that if I were to die in some notable way, having school children that never knew me keep quiet for 60 seconds would be of little consequence. I'll be dead, and I would think that my family and friends would derive little comfort from strangers marking the occasion. In short, a deeply personal tragedy, to me, seems to necessitate a little more privacy and even tact from the outside world.
I have to admit, though, that I feel significantly different about September 11th. I was at the White Sox game last night and being "Patriot Day" as it was, they obviously felt the need to mark it. A lame voiceover reminded us of the "brave men and women who heroically lost their lives", but I have to admit that the moment of silence was rather poignant. In contrast to the national anthem, during which people are forever fidgeting, yelling, forgetting to remove hats, and eating polish sausages, it seemed as if not a soul moved at US Cellular field from 7:08 to 7:09 last night.
The detail with which everyone remembers how and where they found out is fascinating. I will forever remember walking across the Green at Dartmouth on a beautiful fall morning with the morning fog not quite burned off. I was headed to Collis to get some breakfast when Cliff Campbell (I heard he's an actor now...cool!) came running out of the double doors, grabbed me by the shoulders (we did know each other, but certainly not well) and said, "A plane ran into the World Trade Center, I don't think it was an accident, go watch TV." He was gone before I could reply, so I walked inside just in time to see the second plane.
This tragedy, it seems, is deeply personal to us all.
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I remember getting ready for work, turning on the tv to GMA, and seeing the image of the WTC after the first plane hit. The initial speculation was still that it was an accident. Then, as I was calling my brother over, we both watched as the second plane slammed into the building in stunned silence...
Eventually, I drove out to work in the northern suburbs, the Edens looking quite barren for that time of day. The scene at work was quite somber, and it didn't take too long for them to turn us all around and send us home. It was definitely a moment that gets burned into your memory banks.
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