With the 10 year celebration of 911 coming up it would have been easy for me to dive into an essay on the what really happened on 911. I will admit I am a “truther”…I’ll leave it at that. If you want to have some conversation on that topic or related issues I am game. clusterfuxjosh@msn.com
But then I read the article that I provided the link to below and of course I had an opinion…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/911-memorial-treated-like_n_1855559.html
Respect for the dead…Do I have respect for the dead? I suppose I respect life more than I consciously respect the dead. The dead are…well, they are dead. I respect the lives and memories of some who died. I respect my Grandma and the memories I have of her, her life and our times together. I respect the achievements of many who have passed…
In the article above people are getting pissed because someone sat on an engraving of a loved one’s name or they spilled coffee on it. So what!? They didn’t spill coffee or sit on their head or their being…It is an engraving of their name!
I can say this boldly yet I am always uncomfortable with throwing a photograph of someone away, even if I don’t even know the people in the picture. I feel something spiritual and it bothers me a bit to discard the picture. Almost like it feels disrespectful.
Am I experiencing the some of what the folks in the article are talking about when I throw a picture away? Maybe, but yet when it comes to the dead I look at things differently than many others seem to.
When I went to my Grandparents gravesite a few years ago there was only a plaque and there wasn’t a headstone. Someone said I should look into a gravestone, that we needed something to better honor my grandparents. I passed the message to my Dad and he replied with something along the lines of “Why. They aren’t there, they don’t care. They’re dead. That’s not them, those are just shells buried in the ground.” His words were sharp and direct but he didn’t mean it in a disrespectful way. He was just saying that a rock doesn’t change anything. He had mourned and moved on. He has his memories, they were his parents after all. A rock doesn’t bring people back from the dead. Again, I return to the idea of honoring their memory. Celebrating their lives shows more respect, not a rock on the ground or even an engraving…
One a different trip to NY I stopped by the firehouse and was given permission to go inside and look at the old photo albums. I had my (then) 5 year old daughter with me and my sister. We poured through the photos looking for pictures of my Grandfather and Uncle and others. Stories were shared and memories danced with laughter and tears as we commemorated their lives.
To me it seems like the best way to respect the dead is to honor life and the living. If there is a park at the 911 site and kids play in an open area deep in Manhattan that is great! To be able to have fun and rejoice in the beauty of life in a place where so much life was lost seems like a good thing. Is there a more glorious way to the honor the dead than living life? To me it just makes so much more sense than getting pissed about coffee spilled on an engraving or a missing gravestone. Share stories and look at old pictures, laugh, cry and honor the dead by celebrating life. Rocks don’t bring the dead back to life but stories do. And…Don’t worry about spilled coffee.
End Notes:
- Summer is over and school is back in session. I welcome the structure actually, things kind of got away from me over the summer but the kids and I had a lot of fun. Our house is a major mess though! Time for some deep cleaning!
- Last weekend we went down to the Great Sand Dunes in the San Luis Valley. That kicked ass! The whole trip was killer. The valley is known for it’s UFO activity dating back to the 1800’s. There is a UFO observation tower there and we hung out with the lady that runs it for a while and listened to her stories…Wow!
- Part of that trip took us to Bishop’s Castle. This dude bought the land in the 60’s when he was 15 for $1250 and started to single handedly build a castle. It is BAD FUCKING ASS! And he is quite a character! He is a staunch Constitutionalist that yells from the hill down to the tourists that are sheeple and slaves to the banks. He rules! We got along good and I talked to him for some time.
- Took my daughter (she’s 10) to some kick ass concerts this summer. I’m glad she got to see some of these bands and it was great for our relationship. She saw: VAN HALEN, the SCORPIONS, IRON MAIDEN, MOTLEY CRUE and KISS. She says she liked IRON MAIDEN and MOTLEY CRUE the best! She was really proud of her new MOTLEY CRUE shirt and wore it to the second day of school. Now to get her to some punk shows.
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