On school vacation this week I’ve been laying low and trying to finally put to bed this illness that has gripped me for nearly a month.

The other night VH and I downloaded Reign Over Me. The choices on our TiVo were slim, and we downloaded it based on a two-sentence summary.

As the movie opened, I remembered the previews from the movie: another 9/11 movie. Ugh. I’ve avoided most of the 9/11 movies, songs, documentaries, and TV shows. They bother me immensely. I was in NYC for the aftermath of 9/11 and immediately saw street vendors selling postcards and t-shirts of the Towers burning. For some reason I can’t seem to entirely separate these for-profit broadcasts from the people on the street trying to turn the disaster into a buck.

But there was something else. I think 9/11 did effect us all as Americans. It did threaten our safety and usher in terrifying policy in our government. But what has always irked me is the need for so many Americans to make this tragedy into a personal grief, to find some personal way they were connected to this tragedy.

Reign Over Me hooked me with its ability to convey deep grief — as somewhat of an expert on grief, I am usually rolling my eyes when everyone in the theater is sobbing, wanting to scream out that it’s never that easy…or romantic. It hurts and it can make you crazy in a very messy, very ugly way.

But what I liked most about this movie was what it had to say about 9/11. It didn’t show the drama, it didn’t show the heroics, it didn’t show the meaningful words and actions, it showed what it is really about: thousands of people died. And they all had families. And those families have to deal not only with staggering grief, but with constant reminders in the news, in the government, and in the war. Those families lost not only their loved ones, but likely they lost any ability to ever get away from their personal tragedy. So every year they have to watch people who lost no loved ones on that day talk about their terrible grief and sadness, knowing they just have no idea.