I used to watch news reports and documentaries as WWII veterans would recall their time as active duty personnel and wonder how it could be that many years after their service these seasoned and honorable men who were recalling the time in their lives when they were young warriors could be reduced to tears recollecting decades gone by. I no longer wonder how that could be. I stopped wondering on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I never knew heartache so deep that it was all-encompassing, causing physical and lasting pain. I know that when I am 60 or 70 or 80 (if I am so blessed to live that long), I will be instantly transported to that Tuesday in September of 2001 and the months following and I will feel the very same deep and searing pain and will re-live that horror again in agonizing detail as if no time has passed. I will remember wanting to call relatives to find out if Michael and Kevin Kelly (cousins – FDNY) were safe and if Kevin Liberty (cousin -DC area cop) and Mike Siciliano (cousin – NYPD) or Christine Monforti (cousin – worked in Manhattan’s financial district) were unharmed, but did not make the calls because I didn’t know if they had reached out to their family members and I didn’t want to make the waiting and wondering any more difficult. I also had no idea where Tom was or if he was alright, so I had no answers for their questions if they had any. I made phone calls, lots of them. To parents. To let them know that the dates of the beginning of swimming season had changed (yes, it was scheduled to begin on 9/11). As I dialed the phone and got so many answering machines, I prayed that the family on the other end was still intact. There were so many police and firemen that lived in our town, so many moms and dads that got on a train or in a car and headed into Manhattan. The possibility that they might not have made it out was painfully real. With calls done, I just waited and watched the news and prayed. For my husband, our son, my family members, the missing, their families, for our country and for its leaders. And I cried; a lot. And chided myself for crying, but there was no stopping. The tears were a river of sadness whose tide rose and swelled with waves crashing onto the storm ravaged beaches of my soul. The weeks and months following passed in a blur punctuated by funerals and news. Father Mychal Judge was found. Hospitals were on alert to set up trauma units to treat the survivors and all too soon realized that their services would not be needed. Tom’s boots were burned off his feet, the representative from Rockport shoes who came with a truckload of shoes offered a new pair and Tom didn’t want them –his boots were from his days in the Marines. He took the new boots of course; they were a necessity in order to keep digging. Everyone lost at least one pair of shoes on that heaping, steaming pile of devastation. People came from all over to do anything to help. Companies sent trucks filled with clothes and shoes and buckets and anything, anything that they thought might help. Water, food, soap, shampoo, buckets, shovels, clean socks, sweatshirts, lip balm, Vicks Vapo-Rub, the list could go on and on. The days were long and almost never ending for everyone on that pile. The ‘pile’ was moved to the Fresh Kills Landfill where NYPD Detectives spent months and months sifting through what would become the largest crime scene in New York City history to find any scrap of evidence or human remains. Days and weeks and months went by. Widows, widowers, mothers, fathers, children and siblings began to realize that the missing were not missing at all, they were dead. Gone forever. Murder victims in the largest mass-murder terrorist plot ever executed on American soil. In the midst of the digging and clean up, there were funerals. So many funerals. Everyone’s eyes so empty, so sad. There were no words then and are still no words that are sufficient to express the grief and sadness to the families of the fallen. The ones who made it out (I can only speak for those I know personally) were torn between being grateful to have survived and at the same time guilty for the same reason. It remains a struggle all these years later. I remember washing clothes and knowing that as my clothes are swishing in the belly of the washing machine, the remains of the dead were being were being rinsed away in the wash cycle. I saw all that dust and I knew that there was no way it couldn’t be bad. Two enormous buildings filled with steel, concrete, furniture, computers, electronic equipment, and tele-communications systems come tumbling down burning with jet fuel, there is nothing. Not a single desk or computer found intact. It is pulverized, disintegrated, vaporized into dust and ash. Dust and ash that is breathed in day after day by first responders, volunteers and survivors. Dust and ash that is filled with carcinogous toxins that will continue to attack and murder Americans for years to come. I don’t know of any other day in my life that has the ability to fill me with hurt and anger, pain and desolation, hope and heartache, pride and thankfulness, commitment and resolve. I hope and pray that I do not see any such day as long as I live and breathe.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 04:40:20 +0000
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