We'll never forget - for they won't let us By Ray Barrington News-Chronicle The Oscars ended Sunday night with Whoopi Goldberg wearing a gown with a salute to police and firefighters on the back. It was one of many tributes to the victims and heroes of Sept. 11 during the ceremony, including Woody Allen introducing a film about New York and Tom Cruise saying yes, we need to be entertained as a distraction in rough times. And I'm beginning to think that the best way for the entertainment industry - and sports and anyone else - to honor what has happened is, well ... It's to shut the heck up. Look, anyone who was awake at all on 9/11 will have it seared into his memory for the rest of his life. It's what psychologists call a "flash" moment, when what one does or hears is so tramautic, it's seared into one's psyche, never to be removed. We've been through a few, us middle-aged boomers: Before Sept. 11, there was the space shuttle blowing up, and before that, Nixon, and before that, just barely in my case, JFK. And for those older, there were FDR's death and Pearl Harbor, and I'm sure there were those many years earlier who could remember where they were when the Boston Massacre took place. No, we won't forget it. We never could. It hit each of us in a way that we will take to the grave with us. And we will, every so often, feel the pang of something missing. I still can't watch the films of Kennedy or Challenger without a wince. But - being in first grade at the time - I don't remember when the immediacy of the Kennedy assassination began to fade, when it became OK not to start everything with a moment of silence. There must have been a moment, sometime, when the national soul said to itself that he was gone, and it was time, while not forgetting him, to move on. And we may be close to that time now. It may take a year. We'll see a lot of such salutes until next Sept. 11, when the anniversary takes place. And there will be more memorials after that. We won't let go. We'll visit Ground Zero and whatever memorial is put at the Pentagon, or in Pennsylvania, just as we visit JFK's grave and the Pearl Harber memorial. But maybe it's time to stop draping everything in a banner of mourning. It may seem harsh. And for the families involved, there will never be a right time. But for the rest of us, it's time to stop tying everything to one tragic moment. Let's move on.