h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yesterday (September 11th 2002) memorial services were held in a number of places for the victims attack. While I feel that it is right and proper to mourn their deaths, I was left wondering, "What about the survivors?" I'm not on about the feelings they have to learn to live with - the loss of friends / colleagues, 'guilt' for surviving when others didn't. I'm talking about celebrating the fact that although thousands died, thousands more survived. I'm not sure what form such a 'celebration' should take (perhaps a huge open-air service of thanks-giving), but it would be one way of saying to the terrorists, 'Look, what you tried to do, didn't work. You can't change things by suicide attacks. More people survived than were killed, and life goes on.'

Having said that, the people who take part in such attacks are probably too fanatical to care.

I don't know if having a celebration would be the right thing to do for the survivors. I would think that it would make their surviors' guilt worse. I'm sure a lot of people who worked at the targets, a lot of the firefighters and police who were nearby but not killed, are thinking why them and not me.

Celebration was probably the wrong word. Like I said, it would probably be a service of thanksgiving. I appreciate that a lot of people, and not just the emergency service people, are wondering 'Why them and not me?' That is a fact of life. (I felt guilt over not dashing to be with my father after he collapsed with a stroke, even though there was almost certainly nothing I could have done by the time I got there.) But life *does* go on, and I can't help feeling that *some* of the survivors would probably like to get on with their lives, instead of having this 'Let's mourn for the victims' thrust at them all the time.

Don't get me wrong. What happened a year ago was an atrocity and a tragedy. But going over the deaths time and time again doesn't give the survivors a chance to move on and get over any feelings of guilt they might have. It's like keeping a wound open and not letting it heal. I guess that's one reason why I think that the survivors should be acknowledged as much as the victims.