A 9-11 Moment

How lessons learned from that awful day resonate through life's deeper, more personal tragedies.

Whenever the sad anniversary of 9-11 rolls around, I watch some of the specials, but deliberately skip all the speechifying and/or anything that smacks of political opportunism. I do not need politicians, pundits, priests or any other pontificator telling me what I saw and what I felt then; I don’t need to be told what to think and feel today. Surely the country, the entire world (and all of us with it) changed that day. Unfortunately, I am morbidly certain that too much of that change has not been for the best. But, no matter, I guess. We have all moved on in our own special and different ways (haven't we?)

 

However, I have not forgotten this: Within days, if not hours, of that tragedy it occurred to me that all those terrified folk stuck in those plummeting planes and burning, crumbling buildings, faced with the horrid truth of their mortality, nose-to-nose with certain death, when given the chance to reach out and contact anyone, chose to call loved ones. They did not call their bankers, their stockbrokers, their lawyers; they didn’t even call their shrinks to help them “work through it.” They called their wives and husbands, their mothers and fathers. Their loved ones.

 

They didn’t call them to tell them how miserably they had failed them; they didn’t call to remind them how badly they had disappointed them; they didn’t call to remind them that they’d left the toilet seat up or their wet towels on the floor and that, because of that, they were wretches as human beings. They called simply to say Goodbye, to say I love you, to let them all know, in all the horror and terror and panic of those awful final moments, that they and that love were all that truly mattered in this Take-everything-for-granted-and-put-price-tags-on-only-the-most-worthless-things world.

 

I decided then (I’m sure many of us did) to make a conscious effort to end any conversation with any loved one with an “I love you.” And nothing else. Life is unpredictable, risky, chancy, unforgivingly capricious. With the exception of the monsters who hijacked those planes, I truly doubt that anyone left home that morning thinking, “Yep, I’m pretty sure this is the day I die.” I likewise doubt that anyone who saw anyone out the door that morning thought, “This is the last time I will ever see this person.” For many reasons, both good and bad, we simply don’t think that way. Perhaps we should, but we don’t. Personally, I think we are a lesser people because we don’t. But, simply put, life goes on. Usually.

 

I last spoke to my daughter Allison the day after Thanksgiving of 2010. We had planned to get together that weekend; we hadn’t seen each other in months and I missed her terribly. Unfortunately, I was way too sick to travel, so I had to cancel. She and I talked for a while; she admitted that she was disappointed, but if I was sick, I probably wouldn’t have been much fun anyway (it is a testament to my daughter’s unflaggingly cheerful nature that she ever thought I was ever any fun at any time. Just one in a galaxy of reasons why I loved her so completely). Our conversation ran its course; we said our goodbyes. I told her I loved her. She told me she loved me too. That was the last time we ever spoke, the last words we ever exchanged. Within a few days I received a post-midnight call from the Philadelphia coroner informing me that she was dead. Murdered.

 

Gone forever.

 

There is no great moral to this story, certainly no happy ending. I am simply grateful for the smallest of favors and blessings, that the last words my daughter ever heard from me were “I love you.”  I am likewise more grateful than I can ever explain that the last words I ever heard from her were “I love you, too.”  A mighty small and puny comfort, but sometimes in this world, the tiniest of comfort is better than none. I think about that a lot, even before today, but in a way I have today’s tragic anniversary to “thank” for it.

 

And that’s it. My 9-11 moment. End of story.

 

Well, except, of course, for the "I love you."