It was my birthday a few days ago, and for a birthday treat this morning, my husband let me sleep in until 9:00am. He got up, put the dog out, fed her, got the kids up, got them dressed, fed, brushed, and out the door, all jobs that are usually mine in the morning. It made for a pleasant and relaxing morning.

After I finally got up, I met a friend for an exercise date, and then we grabbed a bite to eat after we burned off some calories. I left the restaurant feeling blessed to have this particular woman in my life, and then came home to wait for our new washing machine to be delivered while I caught up with some stuff at home. It wasn’t until I clicked over to Facebook that I remembered what today is.

I scrolled through posts that listed where people were in that moment when we all saw what looked like something out of an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie happen on live TV. People have posted scriptures, quotes from President Bush, quotes from firefighters, and always, the everlasting “Never forget.”

Today, I forgot. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I was enjoying my own happy morning in my own happy sphere, and I forgot what it felt like on that day.

In her book, “On Loss and Living Onward; collective voices for the grieving and those who would mourn with them”, Melissa Dalton-Bradford talks about how a mother’s grief far outweighs the capacity of others around her to grieve with her. While there are moments where others grieve with you, their own lives continue forward. They feel for you but there are lunches to be made and PTA meetings to go to and phone calls to make and work to be done, so they move forward, while that grieving mother is still trying to figure out how to breathe.

(If you haven’t read this book, by the way, you need to. You just do.)

I’ve thought about that conundrum many times since reading Melissa’s book, and wondered at my own capacity for other people’s grief. I’ve not lost a child, so I don’t know about the darkness into which Melissa and her family were plunged. I can only imagine it, and my imagination, I’m sure, falls far short of what it must be like. I’m not so well acquainted with grief, and so my compassion for those who suffer, while deep, by definition is probably not deep enough.

I wonder if our country has enough capacity for grief. Those who are posting about 9/11 first on Facebook are usually the ones who lived in the East Coast or New York itself and were directly impacted by it. My parents lived in DC at the time and our family panicked when we couldn’t get any immediate news about their whereabouts. The hijackers flew out of Logan airport in Boston, where my husband and I were living at the time. I flew out of the same airport just 2 weeks later, and I was almost nauseous with the thought of the evil that had walked through those gates. We felt very personally attacked, felt it very close to home. And when we ourselves moved to DC ourselves not long after 9/11, we passed the Pentagon almost daily, past the lighter colored wall that was rebuilt after the plane had smashed it to pieces. We were reminded of it every day.

And yet, today, 13 years later and 3 hours away from DC, I forgot. Not for a long time, just for a minute. But more than I had ever forgotten before. My capacity for grief, perhaps it’s running out? I truly hope not.

How do you manage grief? How do you manage when you are still grieving and somebody has moved on, or vice versa? And did you do something special to mark the day today?