A September Memory

It is just about 1 PM on September 11th, 2008, seven years after the Setember 11th we all remember well. It was on that day, at a little after 1 PM, that I discovered my dad was alive. I was in session with a psychotherapy client. My friend and colleague, Dee, knocked softly on the door to let me know. It is the only time I've ever asked to be interrupted while in session. Even after the faint knock at the door, the client I was meeting with didn't know about the intimate connection I had with the disaster of that morning. I remained calm both before and after the news that someone had finally heard from my dad, however tenuous that calm was.

I went to work that day because I needed to be around people. It was perhaps the only time in my life that I have ever felt this need. I remember the thought clearly: "I need to be with people." I may have even said it to myself out loud.

As I went about my usual routine that morning, with the television buzzing in the background, I caught sight of the devastation that was unfolding and just then the phone rang. It was one of my sisters; the one who had happened to move many, many states away not long before all of this happened. "Daddy's there... daddy's there," she kept repeating, barely able to breathe. My parents had been out to Minnesota that weekend and my father must have mentioned that he had a meeting in the towers on Tuesday. My nephew was young at the time, and I imagine my father shared this detail in order to connect with him in some way-- a kid who would have been impressed by his pop working at the Trade Center. I quickly snapped back to the phone call: "Where are the kids?" I asked, knowing they would be worked up and worried all day at school if they saw their mom like this. My nephew, especially, was very very close to my father. I talked my sister into a calmer state and helped her to send her kids off to school; then I let her break down. She was all the way out in Minnesota and almost all of the rest of my family was in NY, surrounded by the disaster. My dad in the towers, we beleived, in one of his usual meetings with the Port.

My sister described to me her conversation with my dad that previous weekend; she knew he was there that morning instead of in the Long Island office he usually worked out of. Much of the rest of those ensuing five hours are a blur to me now. Another one of our sisters, our mom, and brother were all in Long Island and it was very difficult to get through to them by phone. The phone calls that we did manage to have offered conflicting reports from my dad's office about whether anyone had actually heard from him. I was at my office, with psychologists and staff and clients alike all huddled around a tv set sharing our shock and concern, when another sister called me to say that my dad's office had not in fact heard from him all morning; previous reports that they had spoken to him were mistaken. This was the moment when my own calm began to break down. But I forced myself to "be strong." And I stayed strong up until I heard he was okay and, of course, until all my clients were gone. My dad finally got through to his office, and they to my mom, her to my sister, and my sister to me at about 1 PM.

The rest of the story goes like this: My father was early for his 9 o'clock meeting and so he took the next subway stop up, past the Trade Center, to get his shoes shined. He then walked back that one block toward the towers only to see the fire, and then the second plane, and then the collapse and clouds and horror that followed. After some sense of what was actually happening registered, he walked uptown to the office of a friend and some four to five hours after the initial blow finally got a phone signal, which allowed him to let us all know he was okay. It was then, upon hearng "he's okay," that I felt everything that had been buidling up since that first call with my sister crying, "Oh my god, daddy's there..."

In the following weeks I was made to feel a similar pain all over again as I watched television clips of the rescue effort, looking into the television set for my brother, who was working there as an iron worker. It was harder than usual for me to just trust he would be okay after having been through the uncertainty of my father's fate only days prior.

I am grateful that my father is alive and saddened, today especially, to think of the many, many people who have been left to grieve. My father lost many colleagues that day and one in particular for whom he still holds tremendous grief; and survivor guilt, I'm sure. He is not the same since that day seven years ago. Most people, my own family included, don't understand the profound impact that something like this has on a person. My family doesn't quite get how it has changed my father. I know; and it helps me to feel closer to him. Today, I am sending prayers and healing energy out to all of those who witnessed the destruction of the day, to all of those who lost someone in the midst of that destruction, and to all of those who helped others get through it. I am grateful, also, to and for the guy who shined my father's shoes that day-- a guy whom my dad returned to thank soon after 9/11.