Where do we go from here? 9/11/12

On this, our last 9/11 on site, I am compelled to reflect back on the last 11 years. I have give the details as I remember them on that clear September morning. I have given my thoughts on the anniversaries past. And now, I look to the future. For the first time since the day we all lost so much, the future is blank. It’s a very odd feeling. You know my husband survived the terror of ground zero, he worked rescue and recovery, he took a brief time to work another job and then he began the task of building the Freedom Tower. That sounds so ordinary. When you look at the words on a page that give the happenings of our lives for 11 years, it looks very ordinary. It looks like we have lived the same run of the mill lives as everyone else. My how looks can be deceiving. Our lives both individually and as a family have revolved around that 16 acre sight for so long. At first, it was the task of merely surviving the day. It was the rising in the morning, remembering how to breath, remembering how to function, remembering to smile and make things appear all right. And trying not to remember the nightmares. And we’d get through the day, he’d go to work, and the children would go to school and I would do the mom thing and at the end of the day somehow we’d all made it through. The day was at an end. It was time to face the nightmares, so we could survive them too, then get up and do it all over again. The days ran together, an endless tunnel of survival. And survive we did. Thrived even. Then, it became about remembering and rebuilding. Honoring and respecting. It got easier, as things always do. And we got on with life, as people do. And now, 11 years later, we are here in this place. But as we got on with the task of living, it was always there. We lived and we grew and we moved on, but always a part of who we had become was that 16 acres. We have lived in spite of, in honor of and because of that 16 acres. I remember when we first took this job, we did so with trepidation, with a certain excitement, and yes, with sorrow. It’s been 5 years since we started down at Ground Zero. We started way down underground in what is referred to as the bath tub and now, she has reached the 104th floor. And yes, we call the tower she, and she is our girl. Although I must say, I’m glad it’s Tony giving birth to this one. As I look back over these years, I think of what we’ve done, who we’ve become and who we used to be. We were different then, we were happier then. We’ve asked a lot of our children, we’ve asked a lot of us. Tony went to work, had insane hours that no human should have to deal with, and I did everything else, living insane hours no human should have to deal with. This meant that the very dynamic of our family had to change. Oh I spent most of my time with the kids, but it wasn’t at games, or parks, or movies like it was before. Like it should have been. Everything we did, everything we were was about the job. But then, nothing in anyone’s life is as it should have been. This, the world we live in, the people we’ve all become, none of it is as it should have been. I don’t go down to the site any more. And I miss it. I miss sitting in the memorial park watching them work. I miss walking around that part of the city. I miss the sites and sounds and smells. It was my place to heal. I never did bring myself to go into the church across the street. And I don’t know if I will ever bring myself to go to the memorial. But that’s okay, ironically, in the end, that 16 acre site was my place of peace and will always be. I don’t need to see the mementos to remember. I have all that I need tucked safely in my heart and my soul. It’s getting close to the end of the job. We won’t be there much longer. And then we will be on to the next one, just like we did before. And for the first time since that day, the future is unknown. For so very long, our lives revolved around this gaping thing, almost like revolving around the eye of a storm. And now we will move on from this place, like so many have already done. And we will find our way. And we will be okay. And we will forever be grateful to have been chosen to help heal the scar. We will forever be humbled that we helped the nation heal. And we will forever remember. We will tell our children and our children’s children the tales of our lives and the lives of those around us. The people we knew, the people we admired, the people we tried to honor. We will to the best of our ability be sure that those who perished, those who worked rescue and recovery, those who rebuilt, and those who have chosen to step up and protect us all were not just names on a wall, or faces in the papers. They were people, with families. They were fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives. Children and cousins. They were loved, they were amazing, and their story matters. So, I guess the answer is we go forward from here. We get up from where the monsters knocked us to our knees. We hold our head up, we walk toward the sunrise. And we live, we remember, and we never ever let anyone sucker punch us again.

The day we live now, written in 2010 reflections of 9/11

Many people over the years have read my memories of 9/11 (if you haven’t and would like to, it’s under notes on my profile page titled “The Day I Remember 9/11”) Recently I have been doing a lot of thinking about the changes in our lives and ourselves since we have started this job so I thought it may be time to update my yearly post to reflect these changes. After surviving 9/11, Tony spent three months working at ground zero on rescue and recovery. His lungs were severely damaged and he was really, really sick for a long time. We live in a raised ranch house. He couldn’t make it up both sets of 7 stairs to get from the garage to the living room. He would have to stop and rest half way up. He still gets pneumonia several times a year. I spent those months watching him walk out the door and then pace the floors, praying he’d make it home. I made him call me every hour so I was sure he was okay. After those three months, he had to go back to work on the next building the company we worked for had starting. He was too sick to continue down there. While I was correct in my original letter, our lives will never been the same, we are beginning to heal. We can remember our friends lost that day with a smile instead of a stab of pain. Tony very rarely has nightmares that wake us both up, although I know he still has ones that wake him up occasionally. I don’t panic if he doesn’t call me every couple of hours or is too busy to answer the phone when I call him. His lungs have started to heal, although they obviously will never be completely right again. We don’t flinch anymore when we hear a plane flying low overhead. Although, truth be told we do look up to check. And our personal greatest testament to life going on is our 7 year old daughter Jessica. Three years ago Tony was offered a job. For the first time since our marriage, he felt the need to talk it over with me. Taking this job would open old wounds and take us to places we weren’t sure we were prepared to go. It would force us to go back there, both figuratively and literally. He called me one Friday asked me what I thought and if I would be willing to entertain the notion. I told him we’d discuss it over the weekend. I went out to run errands but of course, that was all I could think about. I was putting groceries in the back of the truck when I finally admitted to myself that I had to face the reality in front of me. As desperately as I didn’t want him to go, he needed to. So I called him back. When he answered to phone, the only thing I said was “Who the hell turns down the Freedom Tower? Call Terry and tell him you’ll take the damn job” Funny thing was he’d already called Terry. My husband is now one of the head foreman down there. A lot of the current crew lived the same nightmare we did down there and that is as it should be. We are every mindful of where we are and respectful of why we are there. The first few months of being on that site were very hard for me. Every time I got close to the gate I felt like I was going to vomit or have a stroke. I still have not been able to bring myself to go into the church across the street where the memorial is currently housed. It was hard on Tony too. Especially the first month or so while he was down there setting things up before the crew came in. His mind had time to wander and that has a tendency to mess with your head. Then we started to man the job and things got busy. Our entire lives revolve around the job and will for a long time to come. Sometimes it’s hard and always it’s stressful. But when I start to feel overwhelmed, I go down and sit in the little Memorial park across the plaza from the main entrance gate and watch the crane. What we once referred to as Ground Zero has become the Freedom Tower Site. We have slowly begun to turn our worst day into our greatest accomplishment. I’m proud of my husband and our crew. Through all the red tape and political posturing by those above us in this venture, we have begun to heal not only ourselves, but a nation. And the cowboy in me gets a certain satisfaction out of knowing we’re putting something right back up bigger, better and stronger. It is our very own “screw you, and the horse you rode in on”. It has been a long journey these past 9 years coming back from the mouth of hell. Those of us who lived through that day in Lower Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and D.C., have a mark on our soul that is unique to us alone, it makes us part of a survivors group like no other. We go about our daily lives once again, and don’t feel the need to talk about the day the towers fell very often anymore. We recognize each other along the way. We can see the pain that most people don’t. We see in another’s eyes what we see in the mirror and give a nod of understanding as we pass each other on the street. Our pain is still there but it is no longer a raw gaping hole, it has become a constant ache held inside and no longer the center of our lives. We are a resilient people. We dropped to our knees and stumbled back up to our feet. We are Americans, that’s what we do. But once a year, on the anniversary of 9/11, we bring our private pain out into the open once again to remind this nation and this world, to never ever forget. They are still out there, they are still planning and they are still coming. Remember always what happens when you let your guard down, remember always how it felt that day. As for me and mine, we will always remember and we will never forgive and we will never again get sucker punched by a coward.