SOUND OF SILENCE

You could see the pain etched permanently in the faces of the victims families who gathered yesterday, September 12, 2012, at the 11th anniversary memorial of the murders that snuffed out the lives of almost 3,000 human beings at the World Trade Center.

It was a sickening feeling that I felt in my stomach as I looked at these faces of the victims, their children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, nieces, nephews, cousins, other family members, friends of these victims.

Behind their eyes, I recognized, felt, the familiar deep pain that victims families carry permanently inside of ourselves. It is hard to describe that pain, but we who are in this situation of never ending grief, know the look, signs, and sense the agony.

I could feel my own pain for my son Steven, my father Samuel, and all parents who have lost their loved ones to DUI, DWI, Wars, 9/11,  and so many other senseless tragedies.

Watching and listening to the 3,000 names, each being read in memory of the World Trade Center victims by family members, watching, feeling their grief bubbling to the surface, forever grieving.

The ages of these victims flashed by with their pictures on my television screen as each name was read. So many young people, babies, children, young adults in their 20's, 30 year olds the same age as my son Steven when he was so horrifically killed, 42 year old victims, the same age as my father when he was murdered. 

The symbolism clearly felt by anyone with a heart, that all of us are left with one deep, bottomless empty gaping hole, a lifelong scarring of what ifs, what is, what could have been, and why us.

I experience what I am feeling, that death is forever, they are all gone, never to return. We cannot ever again touch, talk, hug, kiss, or see our departed loved ones, and they will never be able to do so either. None of them will ever breathe, smile, cry, feel the sun, snow, rain, get to grow older, nor realize the goals that they set for their futures.

I deliberately post this Blog today, September 12, one day after the 9/11 anniversary date. My reason for doing so, is that all victims and their loved ones in this world know that the days after the date of our loved ones death are the very worst times of the year for us.

These are the times that drag on excruciating slowly, when the world forgets, others forget, and we are left alone as the only ones who truly remember. It is only us who can feel the pain of grieving that never gets better as the years, days go by, in fact it gets worse as we realize over time how much we have lost in life. 

We who are haunted by the demons, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, flash backs, thinking, always thinking, our on/off switches of the mind broken in the on position, cascading torturous memories about those so cruelly taken away, all blending into a chain of agonizing pain.

At the World Trade Center Memorial ceremony in 2011 last year, Paul Simon performed a beautiful, poignant, so very sad special version of the song "Sound of SILENCE" 

YOU CAN WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW.

You can see it in his his face, his eyes, the words written so long ago as he sings, it's all there to feel as you watch.

For it is the terrible sound of silence that victims feel who are forever dead and their families live with until the end of time, never able to hear each others voices, laughing, crying, or saying I love you, missing them is unbearably final.

Paul Simon "Sound of Silence"-Ground Zero-9/11/11