Member-only story
911
I wasn’t going to write this.
I was in the World Trade Center on 911. I parked my car in the North Tower parking lot that morning. I forgot some paperwork for a breakfast meeting and took a train up town to get them. I was scheduled for a meeting at the Windows of the World that morning. I was late, a friend of mine from work wasn’t.
He died. He had a wife and two young kids.
I evacuated my team and we walked across the 59th Street Bridge. The husband of one of the woman with us was a fireman and she couldn’t get in touch with him as we evacuated. He was one of my best friends. It turned out that he had swapped his scheduled time at the firehouse with his friend who needed the time.
The friend died. He had a wife and a new born daughter.
By the time my friend responded and got to WTC, he witnessed the impact of people as they fell from the Towers. It took many weeks of drunkenly consoling him to begin to ease his sense of guilt and the horror he witnessed. Guys do a poor job with grief.
There were too many funerals, to many widows and too many children without a Dad.
Because I was very close to so many firemen, friends who I used to drink beers with, Christmas parties at the firehouse with our kids, the loss rips my heart. The pain and the tears never leave me.
