Triumph?

Today I threw away the mask that I have kept for 13 years as a symbol of Dad's triumph over cancer.  Because radiation treatment requires extreme precision and my dad's skin cancer manifested in the lymph node in his throat, his doctors had to mold a mask that would hold his head still during the treatment. A plastic mesh was heated and stretched over his face until it cooled. Once the form was made, it could be reused daily for as long as the treatment continued.

Dad had two masks made because the doctors made a mistake with the first one. Rather than just throwing it out or melting the plastic down to be recycled, they gave us the mask to keep. My mom and I have always collected interesting scraps for craft projects, and this one had the potential for really interesting projects.

When dad was declared cancer-free, I instead chose to keep the mask as a sort of trophy, something that said "Look at this horrible thing that my dad triumphed over!" When we moved away from Big Bend, the mask ended up pressed against a hot car window, and the nose was smushed, but the resemblance was still there. In my new room, it adorned the top of my bookcase. Certain friends of mine thought it was creepy. 

The night that Dad died, I couldn't look at his face on top of my bookcase, even if it was just a plastic mesh simulacrum. I picked up the mask and took it into the other room so I wouldn't have to see it while I tried to fall asleep. After 13 years, the plastic was brittle, and the mere act of lifting it caused it to crack and break into multiple pieces.

Today, while I was cleaning house, I decided the broken pieces needed to be thrown out. The plastic was too fragile to try to put it back together, and eventually you run out of places to keep every memento. I was trying to be practical.

It's amazing how the tiniest thing can mean so much. The pieces of plastic no longer looked like my dad, but I knew that they did once. Throwing out the pieces felt like throwing out a memory. His triumph over cancer didn't prevent him from coming down with pneumonia. Keeping the mask didn't mean I got to keep my dad.

Reflections on September 11th

Today marks the 11^th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, and I must confess that this is the first year the anniversary has meant something to me. Throughout these 11 years, I have often felt that my emotional response to the attacks was not what it should have been, especially considering my role as a white, middle-class American. But the truth is that the way the world changed on September 11, 2001, did not have direct consequences for my life. I had never lived through wartime, and thus did not comprehend what such an attack might mean for the everyday citizen. I knew no one who had been in New York on that day; I knew no one who had worked in those buildings; I knew no one in the military who faced being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan when Congress and the President declared war on the Middle East. The ramifications of the PATRIOT Act, which were so shocking to others, did not concern me as perhaps they should have—as I look back, I recognize the violations of privacy condoned by the act were obtrusive and mostly unnecessary. I had developed for myself an ethic of free information exchange, so I was not concerned about what might be discovered of me. The aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center interceded in my life at a glacial pace, mostly changing the way I used language and engaged in political rhetoric. I found myself growing numb to the remembrances, days of silence, and mentions of the tragedy. I cared insomuch as the reaction of the United States led us on a path towards perdition; a path which slowly destroyed the sanctity of the ideals for which the country was founded.

This year, though, I am slowly starting to grasp the emotional significance of the event. In some ways, it is because today is the one-month anniversary of my father's death, and I am still dealing with the very real confusion, grief, and heartbreak of that loss. I think about what I am going through, and then I think about how many people faced this same loss because of one unexpected event, how many people lost a father or a mother or a sister or a brother or an aunt, uncle, grandfather, grandmother, cousin, second cousin, friend, enemy, colleague... it is still outrageous that some entity could be so filled with hatred at an idea—in this case, "the American dream"—that he or she or they would choose to cause so much grief and loss.

I mourn those people who died on 2001, and I mourn all those who have died since in the defense of freedom. I mourn that part of the American spirit that the World Trade Center attacks destroyed: an ideal of freedom of differences and the rightness of diversity. We are all of us loved, and not one of us deserves such loss.