Articles

EMOTIONAL HEALING

Garden of Healing

By Michael Mcshea

Everybody deals with grief differently. One great tragic event took place here in New York City on September 11, 2001. Grief still exists in various degrees for different people in this great American city.

All of us have our own memories of that day. I did not lose anyone directly. My wife at work was witness to many things close up and personal as her building was only a few blocks away from the infamous ground zero.

The term of being shell shocked, for some time afterwards, comes to mind for my own situation. We all in this city continue to share the grief and tragedy of that day.

I live in Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of NYC. Staten Islanders have always represented a large number of workers in downtown Manhattan. The ferry across the bay takes us locals to the foot of Manhattan.

Staten Island shares with the other boroughs in terms of civilians, policemen, emergency workers and firefighters who died on that day. Here in my neighborhood, there is an abundance of tales from running into the friends and relatives of people who died that day.

I was witness to a local and temporary shrine on September 11, 2007. A photograph of a dead firefighter, father, husband, and neighbor was tacked onto a wooden electric pole and flowers and candles were on the ground. The dead and our heroes are not easily forgotten here. Grief lingers on, even now, almost seven years after the fact.

There is a recently opened 911 memorial on the grounds of Snug Harbor, a local park, to remember all Staten Islanders who died that day. I understand that similar memorials are open in all five boroughs to remember the local victims of that day.

One of my great disappointments of late is to see that a “Garden of Healing” in the local Snug Harbor Cultural Center here in Staten Island is not finished. It lays fallow and unfinished, a victim of budgets.

This healing garden when it gets finished will go down a zig zag wooded path from one elevation to another. Some of the rustic looking rough timber-cut benches along the way are supposed to be used to meditate and to heal. Memorial plaques on benches are already in place about this city park.

This healing garden will be here for the loved ones, friends, and neighbors, to deal with grief and the loss of these 267 Staten Islanders (civilians as well as those on duty) who died on 9/11. Seventy-eight of the 343 firemen killed on that infamous day made their home in Staten Island. With five boroughs that make up New York City, Staten Island had the largest percentage of loss for firemen in the city.

It is most fitting that here on Staten Island and in the peaceful nature setting of Snug Harbor Cultural Center that there will be a place for Staten Island families and friends to come together or be alone and pray or meditate and remember those lost on September 11, 2001.

Healing does take time. And sad to say, budgets and construction schedules, take time as well.

Life goes on here in Staten Island and the dead are remembered. They are not forgotten.

© Michael Mcshea 2008.  All Rights Reserved.