9/11/2006

I have very little to say except "I remember." It was my first day back in the office after my honeymoon. I remember the brief time when we didn't know where a friend was (he took the PATH train to WTC every day), I remember not being able to get through to my sister (who works in Manhattan) on the phone, and I remember being glued to CNN.com all day long. I remember my bosses acting as though nothing had happened and expecting us to work (I left the company less than a year later and I think their actions on 9/11/2001 had a lot to do with opening my eyes to the kind of people they are.) I remember the smell, the fighter jets, my neighbor's dwindling hope that her firefighter cousin would be found and then her dwindling hope that his body would be recovered. I remember going to the dentist and the dentist telling me that she was afraid one of her patients had been killed because he never showed up that evening for his appointment and it wasn't like him to just not be there. I was there when she got the call that most likely he had died. But most of all I remember that the next day my grandmother died at the age of 96 after having been in failing health for just under a year. I cannot separate the two events because my grandmother was so very important to me. I don't like to talk about 9/11 or think about it too much because it is so tied up with my grandmother's death. I feel guilty and selfish because my grandmother had a long, happy, healthy life and died a quiet, peaceful death in her sleep and more than 3000 people weren't afforded that dignity. But still, I cannot separate the two events and I still cry when I think about it.