Member-only story
911
ALWAY REMEMBER. ALWAYS HONOR.
I first published this a year ago.
911 defines the word “tragedy”.
As a nation we all mourn the loss that day. All these year later I still feel the pain. The tears always come back.
It was too close to me.
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 WTC2, the second of the towers, that morning. I was late, a friend of mine from work wasn’t.
He died. He had a wife and two young kids.
I was in our uptown office when the first plane struck. I evacuated my team and we walked across the 59th Street Bridge. The husband of one of the women with us was a fireman. She couldn’t get in touch with him as we evacuated into Queens by foot. He was one of my best friends.
None of the phones worked. She couldn’t reach him.
We didn’t find out later he had swapped his scheduled time at the firehouse with his friend who needed the time. My friend survived.
But his friend died in WTC1. He had a wife and a newborn 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 apart. The pain and the tears never leave me.
When I was able to get home, I was greeted by a relieved family with a hug that only survivors understand. Our backyard was littered with paper debris from the Towers.
We lived only miles away and we were down wind.
I never visit the 911 Memorial, even if I am with friends who want to go.
I can’t.
