No Time For Hate
“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.”
My husband, Michael, and I met each other in 1991 when I was looking for a rock climber who would be willing to teach my Deaf and Hard of Hearing students how to rock climb. He just happened to not only be the designer of a climbing wall at Sport Chalet in Huntington Beach, California, but also a student enrolled in Advance American Sign Language at the local Community College. A SIGNING rock climber! What are the chances?
Ten years and two babies later, my firefighter husband arrived home later than usual after his 24 hour shift. He couldn’t quite verbally express his thoughts and resorted to signing using ASL classifiers to sign, “Building” and “Airplane”. Our children and I had managed to sleep 30 min longer than typical; an unusual occurrence when I look back upon it, I had not yet turned on the TV. I watched my husband with confusion as he stood in our bedroom still wearing his uniform, urgently telling me (something of importance) in broken English and ASL.
After a few moments and more than a few collective breaths, he stopped. He looked straight at me to say, “Something terrible has happened in New York.”
“What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.”
Dates Americans never forget often include December 7, 1941, November 22, 1963, and September 11, 2001. I remember asking my Dad about dates that were significant to him. He paused to reflect for a moment. Then after providing his wedding date and the birth dates of his four children, he told me a story of how he sat in the shade of a tree near the ocean to listen to the radio report the news of President John F. Kennedy’s death. He told me that he wasn’t sure how long he sat, but rather the moment simply stood still and suddenly time was no longer linear.
“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy,
we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.”
The days and weeks following progressed slowly. The weight upon our chest lay heavy. It was inescapable. Collectively, the country mourned and shared in the heaviness of this experience. I found Michael often pacing the floor, seeking ways to help only to find out that the best thing he could do was to stay in Salt Lake City. His work was home.
My work was to take care of him.
At my son’s preschool there was a Co-op with many of the parents asking me, “How are you doing?” “How is Michael?” They were strange questions for me to answer. Cerebrally, I wasn’t sure which direction to take. Logically, this was a tragedy 2,000 miles away, Michael was in no danger. (This response would have been too cold and impartial. Also, not true. The Fire Dept feels collectively. They are Aspen tree roots; they are Musketeers; they take an oath “Leave No One Behind”). Embarrassingly and secretively, I was pissed off. I was frighteningly angry that Fire Chiefs ordered firefighters into a building housing a large burning passenger plane within. But I couldn’t share this response either. It didn’t quite seem appropriate at the time. (It took me a full year to stop feeling this anger. I rarely shared this emotion and it wasn't until I saw a documentary about the Twin Towers’ architect on TV while on a trip to Chicago with my family that I finally felt some resolution. You see, the design of the towers allowed the towers to be strong and tall and filled with an open common space for people to meet. The core of the buildings were the elevator shafts. It was a brilliant design for business, but It was that same design that made the towers so terribly vulnerable and fragile when the planes flew into them. It was not the architect's intent to put people at risk. Perhaps I could finally forgive the Fire Chiefs too. It was not their intent.)
At the time, no one knew the next terrorist move, afterall, the planes were still not allowed to fly. The 2002 Olympics were scheduled to open in SLC 5 months later and Michael was already informed that he would be committed to work. Everything was changing. The world was frozen and moving at the same time.
The weight on our chest persisted as the numbers of the deceased grew. At one time, I felt like the numbers were isolated from whom they represented. This felt like an injustice. Then it felt like a coping strategy, and then it felt like a person. If, indeed, the Sumerians developed the number system and the Sumerian system was positional, then there would be a value positioned relative to the other value systems. These numbers of our dead had a value. Of the 2,977 victims killed in the September 11 attacks, 412 were emergency workers in New York City who responded to the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 had 64 passengers onboard. When it crashed 125 Pentagon employees lost their lives. We must be reminded that many of these numbers, although symbolic, represent a human who was loved and, now, dearly missed.
“The tagline – Never Forget – is slowly slipping away.”
Amy is the wife of Chris Newton. When Chris and I were children, our families attended St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Our families were active in the Renaissance Festival, Artists in Residence program and gravestone rubbings. Many meals and huge community dinners were prepared and served. Bellis Hall was often found to be a loud and jovial place to gather, commune and celebrate. Once even a very pregnant Fergie (Princess Sarah Ferguson) and Prince Andrew celebrated with us in this Hall of merriment. The Newton Family and my family operated in tandem with one another, parallel with dinners to organize and plan, parallel in the pews on Sunday. Our childhood was one of overflowing activities and libations. Joyful. We were friends but not close friends. But when Chris died on American Airlines flight 77, the communal mourning in our parish and in our family runs vast and deep. It stops me in my tracks to this day.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Amy, their 10-year-old son Michael and 8-year-old daughter Sarah piled in the car to take Chris to Dulles Airport. Mom and the kids were dropping off dad on their way to their new school. Newton was flying to Los Angeles to help some of the people in his office move to Virginia. He had made a tee time to play golf with his father in Seal Beach.
They said goodbye at the curb.
Newton’s charred golf clubs were among the items recovered from the scene. Newton's family spread his ashes in Mammoth near the jagged and picturesque Minarets peaks, one of his favorite spots.
“For me and my family personally, September 11 was a reminder that life is fleeting, impermanent, and uncertain. Therefore, we must make use of every moment and nurture it with affection, tenderness, beauty, creativity, and laughter.”
In 2007, after completing a year-round regime of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation for breast cancer, I was gifted with a year’s payment of tutoring services from one of my most dedicated families. This family gifted me an additional $500, bringing the total to over $5,000. They told me to take my young family away from the familiar and encouraged me to explore “the unfamiliar”; to witness new adventures. We booked a flight to Australia and promptly emailed our Australian friends, friends we visited for our honeymoon ten years prior and who now each have 2 children as well. The timing was perfect. We planned to be gone for 3 weeks.
With hair slowly growing back, I slowly became accustomed to my new body. My metabolism still took a bit getting used to, my joints hurt from the aromatase inhibitors and at the ripe old age of 44, I was instantaneously thrown into menopause teaching me the lessons of forgetfulness and the missed value of restful sleep.
It hurts the whole time, but I need to run in this new, old body. I need to run to feel well. To get into some sort of flow state. To allow the swirling thoughts to order themselves. On a run I am just a body in motion, a companion to the thoughts and an observer.
On a long run in Katoomba in the New South Wales, I came across a fire station along a wooded road which read:
Fire and Rescue NSW Station 343
“We are your local, professional firefighter on duty 24/7/365
and we do so much more than fight fire.
We are Always Open.”
This message was posted on their door, so I walked in! Michael often says that my spontaneity is both wonderful and nerve wracking. He struggles to do the things I don’t give much thought to. (But then again, the inverse is true as well.) As familiar as walking into my husband’s fire house, all the firefighters were found sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee.
I quickly introduced myself and was surprised to hear an American accent respond back to me. His name was David and he cordially went around the table introducing the rest of the crew to me. He later explained that he was on an extended stay of 3 months, but may stay longer; he wasn’t quite sure as of yet. I told the firefighters that I was simply on a run and needed to get back to my family. I asked if I could later bring my husband by. They encouraged this and made arrangements to return within a day or so on a day they were all back on-duty.
I later found out that FDNY honored requests to send their firefighters out of state or country as a part of their PTSD treatment. I was a body in motion on a run. Just as my thoughts ordered themselves, it seemed this trip, too, ordered itself. My run unknowingly brought me to the doorstep of somewhere significant.
On September 11, 2001, 343 firefighters (including a chaplain and two paramedics) of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) lost their lives while rescuing people from the Twin Towers. David, the firefighter I had met earlier, was a FDNY firefighter. He was assigned this station coincidentally and had expressed to me, as written, he would return when he was ready. He would later tell me that many FDNY firefighters would visit this station simply for it’s station number: 343. They would position themselves next to the fire truck or station building with the numbers next to them and take photographs.
What neither Michael nor myself completely understood at this time in our lives was how the message of PTSD was slowly seeping into his body and our lives. This was not something that evaporates over time. It perseverates and gets dwelled upon until it is addressed. In the meantime, our lives and the world around us continue as it must. It’s a survival mechanism.
“When Americans lend a hand to one another, nothing is impossible. We’re not about what happened on 9/11. We’re about what happened on 9/12.”
Each year in September, in the shadow of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, the IAFF (International Association of Firefighters) Fallen Firefighter Memorial hosts an annual ceremony with an uplifting service for the families, friends and loved ones, celebrating the lives, heroism and accomplishments of our union’s bravest of the brave. Our family has attended 4 times. This service honors the sacrifice made by IAFF members who have given their lives in the line of duty.
Listen to Tejon Street Bagpipers play Amazing Grace
The informal celebrations are as important (and celebrated) as the formal. Firefighters are loud 4th graders! (I’m sorry, I had to write it.) Regardless of gender, there is a common adolescence about them that binds them together. They are a ‘one quip unifying sarcastic criticism and compliment hugging bunch’. They are confusing and complicated. They know it too. They know they are difficult.
I married a signing rock climber with full knowledge of Michael’s aspirations to become a firefighter. I’ve supported him throughout his journey and will continue to do so. A spouse of a firefighter requires a unique and intimate understanding of this crew. Their therapist too. PTSD is real. Although 9/11 may have assisted in bringing PTSD to the surface, it’s always been there and requires therapeutic approaches specific to their line of work.
As a yoga instructor, the studios I’ve been affiliated with have offered free yoga for First Responders. We typically have very few people taking advantage of this. Those that do, feel the benefit. Many that don’t, don’t understand why anyone would engage this froo-froo woo-woo nonsense. I’ve heard firefighters comment, “Can you just not use Yoga language?” “Sure,” I responded. Or I’ll hear, “It’s just a bunch of stretching, I can do that anywhere.” But they never really do. Perhaps it is the myriad of emotions that bubble up when yoga eases their protective guard away. Perhaps there is fear of what may bubble up and the venue of recovery from the practice is not prepared for these bigger feelings. Perhaps it is all of the above, “Woo-woo to WHOA!”
“We live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.”
While running my fingers along the etched names of all the Fallen Firefighters I come across an FDNY firefighter taking a photo of (perhaps) one of his peers from the 9/11 wall. I’m taken back to the gravestone rubbings the Newton Family and my family used to participate in all those years ago. Like this firefighter, we wanted to capture a moment in time. We wanted to never forget.
There is a YouTube clip guaranteed to make me burst out into the ugly cry each and every time I see it. A disheveled Jon Stewart sits passionately pleading on Capitol Hill to a row of filled and empty seats where Congressmen and Women should be. Jon is surrounded by FDNY firefighters, many who are sick and dying. He is infuriated that lawmakers have interfered with the healthcare of these First Responders. He is spittin’ mad! He spews, “As I sit here today, I can’t help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to,” he said. “Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders. And in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. Your indifference cost these men and women their most valuable commodity: time,” he said. “It’s the one thing they’re running out of. This hearing should be flipped. These men and women should be up on that stage and Congress should be down here answering their questions as to why this is so damn hard and takes so damn long.”
“You should be ashamed of yourselves!.”
(The former “Daily Show” host told lawmakers on Capitol Hill for delayed health care funding for emergency personnel)
Never ceasing until the Never Forget the Heroes Act, a Victim Compensation Fund could be extended through 2090, Jon Stewart vows to continue pressing the issue “We won’t stop fighting until we guarantee that this program will be there for anyone and everyone who needs it.”
“Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again ... we are survivors. If you are here today... you are a survivor. But those of us who have made it thru hell and are still standing? We bare a different name: warriors.”
“Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again ... we are survivors. If you are here today... you are a survivor. But those of us who have made it thru hell and are still standing?
There can be a place where the blending of yoga and the trained firefighter can meet. As yoga wellness creates a space of tenderness, an ‘opening’ if you will, can the Wellness be in a venue appropriately prepared to meet the Warrior? As the layers of trauma get peeled away one terrible event at a time (or one bit of one trauma at a time), can a replacement of Wellness take its place?
Phoenix Rebellion is a local Salt Lake City resource. They offer therapy services to all. Backed by research, our therapists utilize proven methods to help treat people facing issues in their lives. We have experience working with clients from all backgrounds, nationalities, and cultures. Our therapists have expertise in research-backed tools and methods when working with clients. Part of their specialty is First Responders. They are currently working on building a mind/body/program that incorporates mindfulness, breath practice, and yoga postures to provide their patients with a complete toolset to face their PTSD.
