During the days leading up to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I found myself compulsively watching documentaries about the attacks and about the construction of the memorial at Ground Zero. In seeing the old footage and hearing the stories of survivors, I was struck by what it means to memorialize an event, a person, or a shared tragedy.
Shortly thereafter, a friend of mine who facilitates a weekly group for people across the country who’ve lost a loved one to COVID, told me a story about one of the participant’s visit the COVID memorial in D.C., which I wanted to share with you.
Ed had lost his husband of 33 years, Jody, in the early days of the pandemic before hospitals were equipped with iPads and other ways of connecting families in patients’ final hours. Jody had been whisked off in an ambulance from their home. No goodbyes before he passed. No last I love yous. Just gone. Ed struggled to move on, because how can you put one foot in front of the other when your favorite person, the person your life had long orbited around, suddenly vanishes?
Ed decided to travel to D.C. to visit the memorial by social practice artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg on the national mall. The temporary installation, titled “In America: Remember,” consists of nearly 700,000 small white flags staked into the ground, arranged in a grid pattern. Many flags bear the name of a person who died and a dedication written by someone they left behind.
Ed went to find Jody’s flag. He knew which section it was in, but there would be thousands of other flags in that area that he would have to search through. He got on his hands and knees, systematically crawling up and down the rows to find it. His ears low to the ground, he said that when the wind tore through all 700,000 flags it sounded like the whole world was crying. Uncertain if he had the stamina to continue, Ed lifted his head for a moment. Just then, the wind shifted, unfurling a flag nearby. It was Jody’s. Ed broke down, overwhelmed by his grief commingled with that of so many others.
. . .
Absence is so difficult for our brains to understand. But art has the unique ability to materialize absence, to make the intangible tangible. When someone leaves us suddenly, a memorial gives us the chance to say The memory of the person I love exists here. My pain exists here too. I can see it and touch it and so can you. And that gives us an opportunity for healing.
The night that Ed returned home from the COVID memorial was first time since losing Jody that he was able to sleep through the night.
Of course, we will never be able to comprehend the scope of the pandemic because it is immeasurable, incalculable—the ripples, endless—but a memorial like this one helps us to understand the scale of what has happened. What does 700,000 of something look like? How much space would that many flags occupy? (The answer is 20 acres, requiring 7200 person-hours to install.) Now imagine a human being standing in place of each flag.
Seeing aerial photos of the COVID memorial reminds me of the AIDS quilt when it was laid on the national mall in 1987, under the same shadow of the Washington monument. Each colorful square of quilt, like each white flag, a life.
Some memorials help us wrap our brains around the scale and breadth of a loss, while others, like “She Flew Away” by Silvia Levenson (below), pull us into a single heart-rending point of focus. Levenson’s piece memorializes the victims of Argentina’s “Dirty War,” a period between 1976-83 when pregnant opponents of the military junta were killed after giving birth, their children put up for adoption.
A translucent glass swing hangs empty above a pair of tiny glass Mary Janes. All we can think about is the child who should be there to fill them and the mother who should be standing behind her, pushing her into the air, laughter and hair flying in every direction. Unlike other memorials that use objects to help us fill an absence, to give us something to hold onto, Levenson uses these ghost objects to accentuate the absence of those missing, to show us what has slipped from our fingers.
Though it is tiny in comparison to the public memorials we’re more familiar with, the power of Levenson’s work lies in its ability to make us feel every bond that was broken half a world, and half a century, away.
One of the most well-known memorials in U.S. history—the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in D.C., designed by architect and artist Maya Lin—is perhaps the most seminal in the way that it would influence all of those that came after it. Lin’s concept was so divergent from the war memorials of the past, which tended to glorify the men in command, putting them astride rearing horses on top of tall pedestals. Lin was the first to understand how impactful a name can be. Onto a simple black granite wall she etched the name of every veteran who lost their life, in chronological order, paying no attention to rank. As if to say, In this place everyone is equal in their sacrifice, each person having given the last full measure of their devotion. The notion of memorializing people in this way seems commonplace now, but in 1982 it was revelatory.
Lin’s idea broke ground, literally and metaphorically, in so many ways. Most photos of the memorial don’t show us the entirety of its form or of Lin’s concept. The wall is set into the earth, not above ground as it appears in pictures. Lin wanted it to look like a gash.
"I had a simple impulse to cut into the earth,” she said. “I imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up—an initial violence and pain that in time would heal." The memorial itself represents the process that each person who lost someone in that war will go through.
And though Lin made it very clear that the work was apolitical, meant only to honor the veterans who had given their lives in service, the form of the wall has taken on additional meaning unintended by the artist. It has come to represent the wound caused by fighting an unnecessary and unpopular war.
The largest, and most expensive, memorial of the 21st century is the 9/11 memorial. Though it was the inspiration for my wanting to write about public memorials, I hadn’t planned to mention it specifically because, from a public art perspective, it’s somewhat unremarkable. It retreads many of the concepts of Lin’s Vietnam memorial: the names etched on dark stone, the memorial cut into the earth. That said, it serves an essential purpose: to provide solace to loved ones who, in many cases, never had the closure of a funeral. It’s a singularly difficult site to design for because it isn’t simply a memorial, it is also a burial ground.
In doing research for this piece, though, I discovered something truly remarkable about the 9/11 memorial. According to the official website, “In October 2001, a severely damaged [Callery Pear] tree was discovered at Ground Zero, with snapped roots and burned and broken branches. The tree was removed from the rubble and placed in the care of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.” Nine years later after much love and rehabilitation, Parks and Rec returned the Survivor Tree, as it has come to be known, to Ground Zero where it has become part of the memorial. “New, smooth limbs extended from the gnarled stumps, creating a visible demarcation between the tree’s past and present. Today, the tree stands as a living reminder of resilience, survival, and rebirth.”
Every year, the memorial cultivates three seedlings from the Survivor Tree to gift to communities touched by tragedy. In recent years, a piece of hope from 9/11 has been sent to Parkland, Florida; Christchurch, New Zealand; Las Vegas, NV; and Pittsburgh, PA in the wake of mass shootings. Puerto Rico also received a seedling after hurricane Maria. I cannot think of a more potent way to memorialize the trauma and the destruction of 9/11 or the kindness and care that followed it.
Regardless of what form these memorials take—whether a tiny seedling or a $500 million museum—they help change our relationship to absence. They provide secular places of worship and opportunities for communion. And, above all, they connect us to one another.
i can't thank you enough for amplifying ed and jody's story. they are so dear to me, even though i never got to meet ed.
in my last trip to d.c. i learned something new about the vietnam memorial that came into full relief in reading your piece. there is a group of 10-20 people who show up at the memorial very early in the morning once a week with toothbrushes, polishing cloths, and buckets of soapy water. they spend two hours meticulously caring for the memorial with what my tour guide referred to as a "divine care" for the souls represented in the space.
perhaps everything about the making and keeping of memorials helps us hold, honor, and revere the memories of those whom we've lost (almost always too soon)...from inception to upkeep.