the fall of a bridge, the clinging residue

on wednesday august 1, a bridge that carries I-35W into and out of downtown minneapolis, collapsed 40 feet into the mississippi river, taking with it all the unlucky travelers who happened to be driving there at that precise moment. in the hours that followed, there was widespread shock and universal despair. phone calls were made and emails were sent amongst friends, co-workers, family, acquaintances... "are you ok?"

being from new york, i am very reluctant, if not adamantly opposed, to comparing this in anyway to what happened on september 11th, 2001. the events are, at their core, distinctively different. however, those heightened senses of connection, empathy, and gratitude are universal in the midst of disaster. in that sense, the events are similar. large scale tragedies have a miraculous way of bringing us together.

i remember where i was when i heard what happened. i was in my car, on the way home from south minneapolis. i remember my reaction... without much of a reason or rhyme, i simply began to cry and the tears overwhelmed me. i didn't know where they were coming from. usually when i cry, i know it's coming from about 3 days back, and i like to work myself up into a good old fashioned crying frenzy. but this came upon me out of nowhere. and my first immediate thought was to the people who had been on the bridge, their families, their friends, their children. that was someone's sister, someone's best friend, someone else's father, someone's daughter.

i thought too about myself, my husband, my beloved friends and family. and i thought "oh god, what if it would've been ________ (insert name)." and as i checked in with everyone that i love and found them to be safe, i was overwhelmed with gratefulness. and then overwhelmed with guilt.

it's been five days now. and as the number of missing people has declined from the predicted 30 to the now 8, and the confirmed dead has been announced as 5, it seems that the tone has begun to change. or at least, the tone has become more evident. "it could have been me"/"i'm so glad it wasn't me, or my family".

here's where the guilt comes in. it angers me that we make this about ourselves. it seems that the only way we can relate to the absolute nightmare that those five families of the deceased are living right now, is to imagine it happening to us. it seems so self-centered. it seems almost narcissistic.

i'm not trying to point the finger, because i did it too. but sometimes the thing you hate the most in other people is the thing you hate the most about yourself.

so i've taken a few deep breaths now, and gotten some perspective that isn't quite so collective-loathing. and i've decided that maybe it isn't so much about how we find these points of connection or empathy, but that we find these points of connection or empathy at all... that is the real miracle, that we find each other at all in this mess. maybe we get there the roundabout way, through self-awareness and egoism, but we still get there. and the only hope we have is in believing that the process, the journey, the way from A to B, is somehow covered with enough grace to make it all beautiful. that what is most important isn't the tattered remains of our sense of self, but the clinging residue of our sense of each other.