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.