39 days after 9/11, my mom succumbed to the ravages of a ruptured bowel. Her sister wouldn't fly so soon after those four planes were hijacked and crashed, so she and her brother took a train to the funeral instead. I was mom's only surviving child, the last remaining member of this dysfunctional family that once resided together in Pasadena, MD. Since I was gathering my aunt and uncle from the station and driving them to the funeral home, when Amtrak ran late (to no one's surprise) there was little choice but to delay the start of the funeral.
It was such a time of emotional upheaval for our nation. We were angry, and afraid, frustratedly trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from the enigmatic threat of people whose mysteriously twisted view of us seemed so alien and inaccurate. We've always thought of ourselves as the good guys, and found ourselves taking an earnest look at whether that self-perception was truly accurate. In trying to look at ourselves from the perspective of others, we were learning that even when our intentions seemed sincere, some of our decisions may have been questionable, or worse. But we also learned that there is a clear difference between honest misjudgments, the unforeseen side effects of our actions, and intentional attacks on defenseless noncombatants. Yes, we've made mistakes, and some of our actions which weren't necessarily mistakes still earned us enemies, but no, we didn't deserve for thousands of us who had nothing to do with those decisions to be attacked and killed because of them.
Amid this national turmoil and introspection, in a hospital room in north Atlanta, my mom's life quietly ended. She'd once been a teenager and young adult who loved to dance, who was headstrong and sometimes got caught up in her passions at the expense of her good judgment. Yet I never knew her to excuse her mistakes or back down from the consequences of her decisions, not when that included the conception of a son for whose responsibility she perhaps seemed unready or ill-prepared, nor when the man to whom she later looked to become a dad to him turned out to be very broken in his own tragic ways. Through many nights of his drunken rantings, she steadfastly strove to protect her son and subsequent daughter from the inescapable emotional buffeting of a home marred by alcoholism. Upon his suicide, she continued to build a protective wall around the children she treasured so dearly.
Her own emotional needs led her into a relationship with a man with a rather unusual view of the role that intimacy should play in his life. He separated its pleasure from any meaningful partnered relationship, partly as a result of his embracing of the social transformation of the previous decade, partly due to the wounds he'd received in relationships that could never work in that context. She doubtless counted herself and her children lucky to have escaped her previous marriage unscathed, not recognizing the deep wounds that lay beneath the surface of each of our outward lives.
Thus a decade later she found herself facing the unspeakable pain of burying the daughter who had been influenced by both her father's alcoholism and her brother's drug abuse. Seven years thereafter, she helped her son overcome his own brokenness and abusiveness, to be thanked by learning of both her husbands' secretive and abusive actions toward him. She responded with grace and steadfast support, though I can only imagine the pain it must have cost her. But she never stopped loving any of us once she had decided to in the first place. She understood the permanence of love and, without ever articulating it, knew that love was manifested most fully on the cross.
Today we're seeing many stories about those whose lives were permanently damaged by the loss they experienced at the hands of a man who is now the long-delayed recipient of either vengeance or justice - I think and hope it was closer to the latter than the former. I read the touching truth of those who lost loved ones on that day in 2001 when evil struck such a blow: that the death of the man most supremely responsible does nothing to diminish the hurt they've experienced, and does not in fact bring them any sense of closure or justice. I understand that. And I know it is wrong for me to feel as if they are more entitled than I am to a continuing awareness of the empty space in their hearts. I don't know if they feel annoyed, attacked again, by being forcibly reminded of their loved ones' death at the hand of outside agents. If so, I don't discount their pain, nor would I deprive them of their right to feel it. Yet I am certain that most aspects of death are usually beyond our control, and that includes many of the reminders that come unbidden and often unannounced as the years and decades pass.
I am beyond grateful for the blessings of a mother who, for all of her own faults and missteps along the way, loved me and taught me to love. I lost her at a time when the whole country's attention was elsewhere so, as our attention is now drawn back to that collective moment, I find myself again drawn back to my personal and unrelated one. And though I still feel the holes in my heart that were once occupied by my mom and my sister, among many deceased family and friends, I am so blessed to have had them in my life.
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