Moving, by Gillian

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the adjective as "having a strong emotional effect: causing feelings of sadness or sympathy." So what is it within us, we humans, that draws us to stories or places or events which we find moving? I know that is true for myself. I also know the memories of such places or events, whether I have purposely involved myself or simply stumbled into them, way outlive many other memories.

In high school I went to France with three other girls. It was the first time any of us had been out of Britain and I'm sure we saw it as some wild adventure. We stayed in the picturesque town of Annecy, and from the warm glow which accompanies thoughts of it, I'm sure we had a good time there, though any details escape me. This is supported by a few faded old photos of happy, giggling, girls. But I remember only one thing. Our train, heading south-east from Calais through rich farmland, suddenly entered fields growing nothing but crosses; small white crosses which in my memory numbered in the thousands, stretching to the horizon and continuing for endless miles. They reside so solidly in my mind that I can feel the swaying of the train and hear the clickety-clack of the wheels on the rails as I write. Even as a silly giggly schoolgirl I recognized the crosses as commemorating the dead of the First World War, while France still reeled from the Second. They moved me to tears. They are as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday.

Years ago, I have little idea when it would have been, I was for some reason in Washington D.C. with time on my hands and went to see the Vietnam Memorial Wall. With almost 60,000 names, the gold lettering seemed to go on forever, like those white crosses. The weather was windy and wet and there were few people there. I became mesmerized by one old woman who stood, the rain mixing with her tears, silently caressing each letter of one name. Her wrinkled old fingers gently traced the name from beginning to end and back from end to beginning, over and over and over. I couldn't stop watching. I wanted badly to put my arms around her but could not intrude on her obvious grief. Whose name was it? She seemed pretty old for it to be her son. Grandson? Granddaughter? Why was she here all alone? My heart felt that it would break for her.

I remember nothing else of that visit to D.C. I don't even know why I was there though I suspect a business trip. But I have never forgotten those worn old fingers slowly moving over the cold wet stone.

Shortly after I retired, I found myself in a volunteer job in Hungary for a few weeks. I resolved not to leave without visiting Auschwitz in neighboring Poland, and so one weekend took the overnight train from Budapest to Krakau, to spend a day which was well beyond moving; harrowing, heartbreaking, horrifying. After some time at Auschwitz, having reached my saturation point of the evil of that dreadful place, I returned to Krakau in a cab shared with four others. The five of us stood silently on the cobbled street, watching the cab rattle away. It was almost as if we huddled together searching for comfort from what we so recently had seen and felt. There seemed nothing to say. Eventually we began to introduce ourselves - and a motley crew we were. There was a Jewish woman, about my age, from Wisconsin, two young Japanese men who, as far as I ever discovered, spoke not one word of any other language, and an even younger man who literally spoke not one word at all, so I never knew what country he was from or what language he would have spoken, had he spoken. Still we seemed to have some compelling need to stick together. One of the Japanese men gestured across the street. There was a cinema, showing, rather shockingly I somehow felt, Schindler's List. He turned questioningly to the rest of us and we all nodded yes in silent agreement. What strange impulse led us to do that? It was as if our current state of numb misery was not enough; we needed more. After the movie we performed a strange, hesitant, kind of loosely formed group hug, and I returned to Budapest on the overnight train after one of the strangest days of my life. But I can still recall every detail of that day, while most of my time in Hungary recedes into misty muddled memory. 

Betsy and I spent the whole month of September 2015 on a 5,000-mile road trip to and from the east coast. We stayed in so many different places and did so many completely different things that it seems, looking back, like several mini-vacations all rolled into one. Some things were scheduled and planned, some were simply spontaneous. Driving back home through Pennsylvania, Betsy spotted a tiny red square on the map. Beside it, in miniscule red letters, were the words, Flight 93 Crash Site Memorial. Although we were in Pennsylvania, we hadn't given it a thought. I'm not sure we even knew there was such a thing. Without hesitation we agreed the small detour was worth it, and took off across back roads through rolling farmland.

The Memorial is beautifully, very tastefully, done. 

There’s a long black granite walkway following the flight path, which comes to an end overlooking another pathway (but you cannot walk on this one) mown through the long grass and bushes of that infamous field. This ends at a boulder placed there to mark the impact spot. All very simple but oh so effective.

It moves you to tears and also to shades of the terror those passengers must have felt. There is something magic about it that almost moves you right into that plane with them. At least that's what it did for me.

And after all that is why we visit places like that isn't it? To feel. If we don't feel moved, then why go?

But, back to the original question I asked myself, why? Why do I need to be moved to sorrow and sadness by monuments to death and destruction? Since I decided to write on the topic, I've been thinking a lot about it and I decided that for me it accomplishes several things.

Gratitude. I simply feel enormous, completely selfish, gratitude. It was not me. I was not there. Nor were my loved ones: not on that, or any other, doomed flight, not in the Twin Towers, nor the jungles of Vietnam dodging snipers' bullets, nor any school or shopping mall mass shootings, nor in the Asian tsunami. It revives and strengthens that everyday gratitude I should feel for the blessed life I have lived, and continue to live.

Balance. We need the yin and the yang, that balance of negative and positive, in our lives; the ups and downs. Without bad, we are less able to appreciate good. I have been so fortunate, that I think I have to indulge in collective sorrows to keep my balance; to really feel just how good my life is.

Connection. In feeling the pain of others, I am connected to them. Your pain is my pain. We are members of the same tribe. At bottom we are all tribal beings, and in sharing, no matter how remotely, minimally, the pain and terror of Auschwitz, I keep myself connected; in the tribe.

So it’s not that I get some sick twisted voyeuristic pleasure from being moved to tears by others’ pain.  It’s simply that I need it.

Nicolas Sparks in, At First Site, says, “The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it…”

I think that describes perfectly my need for being moved to tears. It keeps my heart healthy and strong when otherwise it might be weakened by a life too lucky.

© 2 Nov 2015 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.