What were you doing when it happened?
Death is a season rather than a single date. I hadn’t been home from the last funeral for even a week when the terrorist attacks on the U.S. took place–September 11, 2001. Two towers came down, one right after the other like my brothers did, killing over 3,000 innocent people. Now the whole country was in grief. Maybe I wouldn’t stick out so, like a sore thumb. From The Jim and Dan Stories.
The 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. is also the 5th anniversary of my brothers’ deaths. My brother Dan, who was suffering with a liver illness, planned a road trip with our older brother Jim (a.k.a. “the weatherman”), thinking in the back of his mind that it might be a last chance for them to spend time together. They traveled from our hometown of Hull, Massachusetts, where Jim still lived, down the east coast, before heading back to Houston, where Dan lived and where Jim would fly home from. They went to a baseball game together, gambled in Atlantic City, saw the Vietnam War Memorial, and visited me in Virginia. It was Jim’s first time visiting me and the first time he had been out of Massachusetts since he was in the Army during Vietnam and stationed in Korea. Two weeks after Jim returned from the trip, he died unexpectedly and tragically in a machine shop accident.
Dan missed Jim’s wake because he was too sick to attend, but he pulled himself together to make the funeral. My mother and I helped dress him that morning. Dan knew in his heart that as he watched his brother’s funeral, he was seeing what his own would be like. He died a month later in a hospital in Houston. My sister Kathy, sister-in-law Jeanne, and I were with him when he took his last breath.
It was my niece Chrissie, my only other family member who also lives in Virginia, who called on September 11th to tell me what had happened and to tell me to turn on the TV. I didn’t want to watch. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to see more death. And then it hit me. And then it sunk in.
The following is another excerpt from the Jim and Dan Stories:
Jim had his teeth cleaned a couple of days before he died. He left a “things to do” list on his night stand table. At Dan’s apartment, The Houston Chronicles piled up at the front door. The messages on his answering machine piled up too.
When someone dies, it’s like their life stands still and their belongings are frozen in time. All the details of everyday living that they worried about prove to be meaningless. They’re excused from all obligations. Their lives don’t wind down; they just stop.
The girl at the Pharmacy approached my mother cautiously, “Mrs. Redman, I thought you might like to have these,” she said. They were developed photographs of Jim and Dan’s trip that Jim never had the chance to pick up (probably one of the chores on his “things to do list”).
“Only Jim,” I thought when I heard he had taken pictures of clouds from the airplane window on his flight home from Houston.
“There are a couple of the World Trade Center buildings before they came down, taken from the highway. Can you believe it?!” my mother asked.
September 11th, 2006 9:55 am
The tragedy of 9/11/01 and your own personal tragedy coming so close together had to have been unbelievably painful. Thank you for writing so candidly about it — I can’t begin to imagine what difficult days those must have been for you, and how difficult the subsequent anniversaries are.
Thanks again for sharing this on your blog.
September 11th, 2006 10:01 am
oh colleen. such a terrible time for you and so many.
you are in my thoughts sweet one.
none of us can ever forget where we were or what we felt.
take care darling. and thank you for having shared your memories of your brothers.
sigh.. sad sad days. but we try to remember the beautiful people we have lost to keep them alive in our hearts and minds at least.
September 11th, 2006 10:11 am
I was only a mile away when the towers came down. My office and the streets were flooded by creosote and dust laden civilian workers stumbling trance-like toward home. We all walked miles and miles home without saying anything to each other owing to the shock of it all.
I lived on the NW side of Central Park far away from the destruction. Yet the sickening and pervasive smell of an electric-type fire hung around for about a month afterwards. You couldn’t go anywhere without smelling it. Even lying in the park and looking up at the sky was both eery and heart-swelling during this period as the only aircraft that flew were supersonic fighter jets patrolling the airways.
My wife and I and everybody tried to make the best of it by going along with our lives as if things would be normal again. We dined al fresca despite the burning smell. I remember we went to the movies and watched “Zoolander” for a much needed laugh.
It seems weird but slowly and yet surprisingly quickly our lives and everyone else’s lives in the city went back to normal with the occassional reminder from heavily-armed security around transportation hubs and these 9-11 anniversaries.
Today makes it all the more poignant to not play politics. It just makes a game out of people’s beliefs.
September 11th, 2006 10:24 am
Thanks for this touching post. Jim taking pictures of the clouds reminds me that many artists, including Georgia O’Keefe, have pictured clouds near the end of their lives, perhaps looking beyond their earthly ties.
September 11th, 2006 10:24 am
How very touching to read this. It reminds me of how we are all stuck in the interconnected web of life. Thank you.
September 11th, 2006 10:27 am
I imagine that all the press about the anniversary of 911 reminds you of your loss even more, if that is possible. I am sorry about your brothers. Receiving the pictures from the drugstore must have been an especially painful moment, linking all the recent deaths.
September 11th, 2006 10:38 am
“When someone dies, it’s like their life stands still and their belongings are frozen in time. All the details of everyday living that they worried about prove to be meaningless. They’re excused from all obligations. Their lives don’t wind down; they just stop.”
That just hit home for me, it was so true! That must have been the most awful time for you and your family, and my heart goes out to all of you. This was a wonderfully written post, and I hope that you are able to find some healing with every passing day.
September 11th, 2006 11:28 am
Thanks for this. A parallel tragedy in your life on such a day seems so ironic but somehow fitting….a connection to the larger forces. And what a difference from your blog yesterday about a happy event…the polarity of human life on this earth.
September 11th, 2006 11:53 am
what a difficult thing to go through! i am very close to my siblings and can’t imagine the sorrow of losing one, much less two. on 9/11, i was 6 months pregnant with my first child and about to leave to go to my “child and adolescent disorders” class at the college i was attending. you are already uber-sensitive when you are pregnant, and i remember feeling sick and sobbing, thinking, “what kind of world am i bringing my child into”.
September 11th, 2006 2:49 pm
So much to bear. You are a strong person and it comes through in your writing. Thanks for sharing it with us, Colleen.
September 11th, 2006 2:58 pm
Full circle. Life can be astonishingly cruel and beautiful all at once. Condolences on the fifth anniversary of your loss.
September 11th, 2006 4:46 pm
Once again, your post is so moving. Today has been like it happening all over again. I don’t think I’ve cried as much today as five years ago, but the tears have surely flowed as I read tributes to those who have fallen, and then to read once again of your brothers.
I was flying home from Richmond a week ago, after visiting my new granddaughter. My camera was in the overhead compartment, and I didn’t want to disturb my daughter who was trying desperately not to be sick, or I would have photographed the clouds as well. They were simply magnificent that day.
I love reading your posts, the happy ones, but especially when you bare your soul about your brothers. God bless.
September 11th, 2006 4:58 pm
Hi Col,
I remember well.
Beth, my daughter for your readers who don’t know, called me to put on the TV. We watched in horror. Beth told me as we were talking something else that was also strange on that day; Isabel, then only two years old picked up the phone as babies do, playing with the numbers. Turned out she called 911 just as the plane was hitting the towers. 911 in turn called Beth back to see if anything was wrong. Everything was of course, but the call was just one of those simultaneousness events that is beyond explaining.
The only good part, between the death of our two brothers, was Dominic’s birth. He was born smack dab in the middle of the deaths of Jim and Dan.
September 11th, 2006 8:05 pm
I remember this clearly too. I was at work. I called Johnny (our brother) who was going to go home the next day after being here twice for the deaths of our brothers. This was after I heard one plane hit the world trade center. There wasn’t a TV at work and everyone at work was all upset. I wanted to see if it were true. Johnny gave me a blow, blow description of the whole thing…..and then while we were talking he told me there was another plane that hit the second tower…we were both shocked!!!!
Later on a client came into our clinic and told us the pentagon was a target and plane went down there too. We thought this person was crazy, we told them oh no it was the world trade center.
It was one of the worse years of my life.
September 11th, 2006 11:09 pm
This is a sad day for you, even more so with the death of your brothers. Yet we should remember them, and you do so in your posts, your book and your talks. It’s good to remember the event. It’s even better to remember the individuals.
September 12th, 2006 10:14 am
What a huge sense of mourning the date 9/11 has for you…..I am so sorry. And I admire your strength and ability to help others through your own difficult experiences.
My mom always told us how she remembered exactly where she was when they announced JFK had been killed.
9/11 will be the same for me.
I don’t want to even imagine what it will be for my little nephews and niece.
September 12th, 2006 8:49 pm
I can only imagine how devastating it was to have the world tragedy occurring as you were going through your own personal tragedy. A very difficult time for you. My thoughts are with you, Colleen.