Picket Fence Abroad: Travelogue #7: Memorialising loss

I wrote an essay for school once about how nations commemorate, honour and sometimes elevate loss into legends. In my essay, I talked about the design for the WWII Memorial in Berlin, the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance, and the soon-to-be-completed 9-11 Memorial in New York.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself in New York on the 10th anniversary of September 11. For the most part, it was life as usual, and I liked that.

I like the fact that something so traumatic could happen, figuratively and physically scar a community, yet people still move on determinedly with their lives.

There were of course some reminders of the occasion: we could see signs of remembrance, personal and public memorials in parks and other public spaces.

But of course, the most interesting of all was the newly opened 9-11 Memorial, still situated in the middle of a construction site at this stage. Some memorials glorify, others narrate, but the 9-11 Memorial does neither.

You hear it first - the steady splashing of water flowing down into the North and South Pools, each representing a void. The water cascades further into a smaller square at the centre of each pool, creating a dichotomy of void and fill, motion and stillness, loss and hope, and above all - innocence, sorrow.

Names of the victims line the perimeter of the pools. As you walk around, you can see flowers and flags left by family members next to certain names. It’s a strangely understated and poignant scene, and I was ever so glad city planners decided not to go with a more grand and glorified design.

Because watching water flow ceaselessly into the void of the two pools that day, it seemed to me that every other design would have been unthinkable, light weight, and inappropriate for memorialising this consuming loss.

And you can’t do much better than that. Props to the architect.