The walls

There are a few events in one's lifetime that the place you got the news will always let you remember the place. What is it about memory that sears your physical location to the place that it happened? It must be an evolutionary thing. That you always remember the place some world changing event happened so that if you need to, you can avoid that place. Funny how the mind tries to insulate a tragic event by marking it in your brain as possibly avoidable. Maybe that spot is imbued with memories of hurt. Maybe that spot is forever changed by that event. Why else would your mind remember it so strongly? Is it possible that every time you touch that spot of earth, a little of that tragedy touches you again?

So I remember the radio alarm clock going off on 9/11/01. I remember hitting the snooze and my husband leaving the bed. I remember him coming into our room after a few minutes, telling me that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. We got out of bed and turned on the television. We sat on the couch and both watched as the second plane crashed into the towers. There was the grim realization that this was not an accident. We both called our loved ones in Hawaii and California to make sure they knew what was happening. I remember asking my husband to stay home, to avoid the ferry, to avoid the down town city scrapers. He went to work anyway. He wanted to stop watching the repeating loop of the planes crashing, the people jumping, the ash choking all those people on the streets. Then they stopped the ferries for a time and I thought he would be stranded in Seattle.

But I couldn't avoid the bed where I heard the news. I couldn't avoid the living room, a place where I had watched the second tower fall. We lived in it. We avoided the media, turning on radios and televisions sparingly -- just enough to know what was going on but not enough to steep in grief all day. Like most people, we sent money and went to church. The whole world was reordered around me.

I imagine that if grief were paint, 9/11 would have sprayed our bedroom and living room. When my father died a year later, the rest of the house received a second coat. Maybe three. On my mother's first visit back after Dad died, I remember she refused to close any of the doors in the house, choosing to shower with the door ajar and changing her clothes in the bedroom with the door wide open. I think the grief was so big for her that the doors couldn't shut, even if she tried.

So we moved out of that place about a year and a half later. This new house has a couple of coats of grief too. Someday we'll shed it as well.

If only it were so easy.