How NYC commemorates 9/11: #Neverforget and #carryon
Today’s the toughest day of the year for New Yorkers. We read names, tell stories, remember faces, and pay tribute to bravery and courage. We all remember where we were, what we were doing, and who we were with on that most terrible of mornings, mourning.
I was in Chicago crossing the river to the theater for work to open The Full Monty Broadway tour, coffee and muffin in-hand. A huge crowd gathered around an electronics store window full of TVs. I thought they were watching a movie preview. It took me a moment to realize it was live news footage and my city was under attack.
22 years on, half a lifetime ago for me, and we live by the code #neverforget but we’ve added #carryon to it because that’s what 1,649 New Yorkers wish they could’ve done on that ordinary, shining Tuesday. To-date we’ve lost double that number from diseases caused by 9/11.
A month after the attack, I ran the Chicago marathon and it remains the most life-affirming event I’ve ever been part of. I’ll never forget the kindness, love, and support that poured from those streets onto the 30,000 runners, myself and my dear friend, Mark, included. Chicago and Chicagoans took up permanent residence in my heart that day.
A month after the marathon I lost my job because many Broadway shows and tours closed, unable to generate enough revenue to continue. With no job and no place to live, I boarded an empty plane and went to Europe for the first time at the suggestion of my dear friend, Amy, who made it clear that there was nothing better I could do. She was right. That trip changed my life. Everywhere I went once people realized I was a New Yorker, I was gobsmacked with their kindness and compassion. They patched the wound those fallen towers left in me.
So this morning, as I’ve done for 22 years, I went for a run. I went by my local firehouse in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn with this mural memorial to the neighborhood FDNY firefighters we lost. I reveled in beauty by hanging up art in my apartment. I sat down at my laptop and wrote. I planted seeds that will eventually grow into plants and flowers. I carried on for those we’ve lost and the many who grieve. I cried. I remembered.