Americans Mourn to Remember

And so the colossal cavity left by Sept. 11 was filled with harrowing images and sweet music.

Some Americans were hesitant to participate Wednesday. To many, the media had crossed the line of propriety long ago. To many it was not their style.

But to those who assembled anywhere in the country, to those who shirked the cliches of "never forget" and actually put words to practice and dredged up the debris - my Lord.

Millions flipped through newspaper layouts, scared stiff to look, scared stiffer not to. Televisions blasted with 24-hour coverage. Memorials and choruses rang and sang to the highest of heavens.

The nation gripped itself, not sure how to conduct itself down to the tiniest of inflections and facial contortions.

Americans gathered and did the only thing we had an intuitive inkling of doing -- we mourned.

Wednesday was far beyond patriotism, far beyond the usual -- beyond even the biological. It's hard to forget the horrifying instant when what was normal became suffocating, became bewildering, became war.

Requiems rolled across oceans and thundered through symphony halls.

At the Meymandi Concert Hall at Raleigh's BTI Center, a full house gathered to collectively mourn.

"Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them," went the translation of the key refrain of Mozart's "Requiem," as performed by five choruses accompanied by the N.C. Symphony.

The musicians tuned their instruments awfully late, but the conductor's baguette cracked down at 8:46 a.m. Wednesday. Was there a chance in the entire world that the first, singular, stirring note would be tardy?

A swirling cyclone of symbolism whipped a nation in a cosmic updraft. My mother turned to me and said, "Symbolic bunch, humans beings are." I replied with only a guttural query. "It's the only way we know to survive," she said.

Did "God Bless America" knock you to your spiritual and emotional knees? In New York the nation stood beside her and guided her, as we had all along, and she in all her glory obliged and did the same for us.

As President Bush moved from Washington, D.C., to Shanksville, Pa., to New York, the memorial formation moved with him.

Miniature U.S. flags, flamboyant neckties and buttons inhabited each audience. Overhead at each site soared four jets in the "Missing-man formation." Video cameras dotted the grassy knolls or event-specific platforms.

It could have been construed as repetitive, but it was that continuity of thought and spirit that made Sept. 11 a national, collective day of observance, rather than regional and exclusive.

But enveloped by crescendos and mezzo-soprano interludes of the "Requiem," I was distracted by my personal memories of the towers.

Listening to the heap of yarns New Yorkers would spin about the construction, the observation deck, the anecdotes and the stories all foreigners were required to hear as due diligence for visiting Babylon.

Yes, Babylon. That complex was the height of civilization.

It is common knowledge to most New Yorkers that you could give an "unfamiliar" vertigo by asking people to stand touching one of the towers and look up the face of the structure.

Maybe if you were with friends or family, they'd catch you as you fell straight backward due to the sheer optical disorientation. Maybe.

But that's all gone now.

So with a year of cerebral disorientation under our belts, we are left having effectively triumphed in Afghanistan, still biding our time to exterminate Saddam Hussein.

But Wednesday was not about any of that. Maybe Thursday was -- but Wednesday was about the past, about our resolve, about us. If you would like to never forget, remember that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, were an act of war and that we responded in the manner we all knew we would.

A mighty fine hour.

It had to make you damn proud to be an American, to venerate our fraternity of liberty and to share in the unmitigated splendor of what we call home.

Nathan Perez can be reached at nperez@email.unc.edu.