NS September 12th, 2009

I can’t explain the significance of that day any better than I did two years ago.

When I sat at my desk in London six years ago, watching the skies darken in New York with the black flames of death, the charred debris of humanity lost to the winds that fanned them, I knew that nothing would ever be the same. I watched the impact, the implosion and the crumble with a numb, dead feeling of loss that was achingly familiar. Black Tuesday, some called it. But for me, the curse was not in the Tuesday, but in the 11. A new day of infamy for the nation, but a day already marked by sadness in the lives of my family. See, September 11 will never just be the day the planes hit the towers that held the people that lost their lives, but the day I was reminded that death never leaves us. And in 2001, that seemed to be a pattern destined to repeat itself, over and over, never letting me forget.

September 11, 1988

I sat and stared at my hands, gripping the pencil tighter as I stared at a math problem — one of those story ones where it asks you to figure out when two trains will meet, given x and y speeds and departure times and you end up shouting “Who the hell cares?!” when you can’t work it out — from one of many in the stack of homework by my side. My older sister and I had been missing more and more school then, as our younger sister Amber’s health deteriorated, and the ‘take home work’ was mounting. I tried so hard to concentrate on that math problem but no matter how many times I read the words, they never registered in my brain. All I could hear was the soft, muted sounds of my mother’s crying and a whispered prayer from somewhere else in the cavernous depths of our high-ceilinged living room. I knew that at any minute someone would come get me, hug me tight and tell me the words I’d been expecting to hear for months but could never imagine being spoken. I dreaded those words for many reasons, some of them selfish. It would mean she was gone and I would surely miss her but, in a way, I’d already said goodbye. I thought I’d made peace with her departure from earth to heaven, as she herself had done long before any of us. But I still wasn’t ready to hear my mother sob with wracking grief; to see my father’s brow knit with sorrow as he held her tight; to know that no matter how hard I tried, I could never erase this loss, this hole in their hearts. In all of ours.

The cancer had started in her brain as a tumor, when she was just five. We didn’t know it had entered, like a thief slipping in the back door, until her blurred vision, searing headaches and dizzy spells sent my panicked mother to the emergency room and Amber under the jaws of the CAT-scan machine. Almost two years of radiation, chemotherapy and multiple surgeries later and we were no closer to fixing her than we were to appearing on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. So we brought her home and waited. Then September 11 came and the waiting stopped.

My parents, so strong and stoic and solid for her those two years, faltered. Just like the planes on 9/11, their lives had been hijacked, taken off course, crashed into the ground and changed, unalterably and inexplicably, forever. Their grief in those early years after her death was crushing, difficult to comprehend. Sometimes it could suck the air from a room or leave it sitting heavy like a stone on our chests. As a child of nine, I had managed to distract myself in the business of growing up but they had jobs, medical bills and two children to raise. Emotions were always close to the surface and we learned to tiptoe around them, bottling them up until the cork burst with a pop and fizzed over into anger and disconnect. At one point I wasn’t sure if we would be able to scrabble together enough pieces of our individual hearts to make a collective one again. But the dust settled and the pages of the calendar turned, year by year, and we came out the other side. Not unscathed, not unchanged, but like soldiers returning from war: glad to have made it out alive, eager to rebuild and move on, but making damn sure the world never forgets.

The other night, as I thought about the upcoming anniversary and how to prepare myself for the inevitable sadnesses the day would bring, I realised suddenly the magnitude of the loss and how far-reaching and profound it’s been. I would be a different person in a different place leading a different life, no doubt, if not for the curse of this day. I would probably not be living in London, married to my wonderful husband or with my beautiful, amazing daughter. To think that one event, one day, shaped my destiny to the point that my child might not be known to me as she is just boggles my mind. When I imagine myself in their place, if I allow myself to think, for even one second, about losing my girl…well, words can’t describe the black pit that opens in my stomach and the cold fist of fear that encases my heart. All I know is it has made me empathise with my mother and my father more than I ever, ever could before.

They say that often you never truly appreciate your mother until you become one yourself. Now, I don’t know if this is true for everyone as I’m sure there are plenty of childless women who appreciate their mothers very much, but it’s been a real awakening for me. Every time I hold my sick child in the middle of a night fraught with worry, lean over to kiss her forehead, feel joy at her accomplishments or just have a really difficult day, I think of my mom doing the same things, having the same fears, enduring the same trials and feeling the same love.

And when I look at my country — lost, floundering and hurting — I sometimes want to hold it like a child, put a cool hand to its hot head and quiet the restlessness and illness inside. As each coffin comes back onto U.S. soil, draped by flags and wailing widows, I turn my eyes to those in charge, those who should be like grieving parents, doing everything in their power to stop their children from dying, and see nothing but the black mask of political indifference. When the towers fell, so did we, and I can’t go back there — to the place of my birth, the place I loved and respected when I was growing up — until the fever has broken.

But unlike the buildings in New York, my parents didn’t crumble to the ground on September 11. Not because they weren’t hit just as hard, but because they couldn’t. They remained our towers of strength and stood strong. And that, not Amber’s death, is what I will remember now and for all the remaining September 11ths in my life.

“We can only hold as much joy as the pain and suffering that we’ve had carved out of us.” — Author unknown

• In The News , Squish Squish
• Comments(8)