When I Think About 9/11

9/11 gives new meaning to working from my to-do list.

I was standing at the bottom of the Word Trade Center when it fell. I was standing so close that I didn't know it fell. I thought earthquake, until I couldn't breathe. Then I thought nuclear bomb.

Now, when I let my head go back to that day, there are two moments I most easily go back to:

Moment 1: At one point I was with five men in dress shirts and ties totally covered with debris. We had each climbed into a bank next to the World Trade Center site. Debris coated our throats and we had all just fought over who got to drink water out of the toilet. When it turned out there was enough water, we went together to a hallway and sat on the floor. I started crying. The guys looked at me like I was going to be trouble and moved away. But one guy put his arm around me.

Moment 2: Minutes later. The men and I split up outside and lost each other quickly. None of us had any idea where we were. There was no one walking. I was all alone. I was still so disoriented that I didn't know the building fell, even though I was walking at the site. Then some woman, wearing completely clean clothing, took my hand and told me to walk with her. She shepherded me nearly 10 miles on foot, patiently waiting through my many screaming panic attacks, to her house on the Upper West Side.

Those are the two scenes I usually think about when I think about 9/11. But sometimes, if I am feeling like it might be an okay time to cry, I'll let myself go to other stuff. Like, the part right before I heard someone break a window in that bank. The part when I thought I would die. I remember realizing my mouth was open but I was not taking in air. So I shut my mouth. I remember thinking I wish I had shut my mouth sooner so maybe I could have held air in my body a few seconds longer.

Then I accepted death. That does really happen. You quickly run through everything that matters. It is so fast how you do that. Because I know you know this: Not much matters. I had no kids. I thought of my brothers and my husband. I felt sad. Then I felt fine. And I waited to die. I could not find anything else to do. I could not see or breathe.

Then I did not die. Then I climbed in that bank window.

People wonder what the hell I'm still doing with my husband when things are so bad between us right now. But I have been one minute from death, and all I wanted in that moment was to see what life would be like with him. That's what I wanted. I felt enormous disappointment that I would never know.

I just wanted to see things with us unfold. So I'm not giving that up. Not now.

And here's what happened when I got to that Upper West Side apartment. My husband walked 10 miles to pick me up. I told him I was fine and he took me straight to the hospital. He told me, later, that even though the woman put me in the shower, even though I did not say what happened, he could still see debris stuck deep in my ear and he knew that things had been bad.

Doctors bandaged my eyes shut. My husband held my arm for three days, showing me where to go. For a week, he stayed by my side every moment. I didn't shower. I barely slept. My ability to stay in reality was limited. And he was there the whole time.

And then, months later, I went to trauma recovery group. A lot. And then I started reframing the story. I stopped blaming myself for walking toward the World Trade Center when I heard there was danger. I stopped thinking of the trauma as derailing my life and started thinking of it as a new path. And then, I started working. A little at first. But soon, at full-throttle.

So, look, it's true that I know what it's like to be on one's death bed. That saying that you never say, "I wish I worked harder." It's absurd. You don't have any thoughts like that at all. You just have your family in your heart. You see there is not a lot of room for stuff there. Your family takes up everything in those last seconds.

And then, you go back to work and it's totally stupid. Right? What is more important than being with your family? That's what you say to yourself.

But here's what I am giving up. The idea that every second could be my last second. Because then you are not living life. Yes, it's true, work is not as meaningful as family. And yes, it's true, I did not think about my to-do list when I faced death. But if you're not dead, your to-do list matters. Because that's what life is. Life is getting up and going to work on things that are high on your list. Work in your pajamas, maybe, or in a corn field, or in the car to drive the kids to school. It's all work. It's what we're doing here. And it's a treat.

So what has changed? I appreciate kindness more. The kindness of an arm around my shoulder, the kindness of a warm shower from a stranger. The kindness of my husband. And I appreciate the daily routine of life. Waking up. Tending the to-do list. And not treating every moment like it's my last. Because it's not. This is my life, unfolding. It's my dream come true. It's not unfolding like I thought it would, but I'm getting to watch it. Thank God.

Comments

[Libsrule]

What a great survival story and one of the few I have ever read about. It's an amazing story and one you seem to have put into proper perspective.

Keep going.

[oldschooldemocrat]

I think it's very sad that this writer shares an intensely personal and deeply moving post with us, and we immediately start scoring our own political points. Surely, however we feel about the politics of the present, we ought to be able to stop and listen to a completely apolitical reflection on that day. Have we honestly become so strident and divided that we can only call names and deride our fellow citizens? Shame on those who prefer their political opinions and affiliations to our common humanity.

[drblack]

No religion is anything other then a bunch of words resonating in the minds of its believers. neither islam or christianity are necessarily violent.
The bible is so vague and muddled that many passages could be interpreted in most anyway.
The koran,though more straight forward since it was written by one dude and not filtered through the politics of the catholic church is no more or less inherently violent than the bible.
They both are books of superstition and should not be used to determine reality or set policy of a public or personal nature.
I have found that few "Born Again" xtians have even read the bible and definitely not the koran.
I would like the people who posted comments above to post the parts of the koran which say that one should kill people.

[EvereaderinSC]

Penelope stated, with great wisdom, esp. after all she lived through, you shouldn't live each moment, each day like it's your last. All the songs and hype play into Bushco's Orange/Red/Yellow Code level alert mentality: "Be scared, be very scared, this could be your last moment...& never forget it..."

If you do, we might not be able to have you accept, hook line & sinker all the lies and crap we've fed you these long years. That saying about being a Republican and being able, for that reason, to get away - well in this case, literally murder - is something we should have chucked long away. This is so beyond political parties. This is about survival, ours.

No one deserves this chaos and death, even those who mistakenly allowed it to happen by supporting/electing Bush/Cheney. At some point people need to see the truth, be informed and demand something be done. There is WAY more to 9/11 than meets the eye at many different levels. It's been exploited so effectively by the Republican politicians, esp. Bush & Cheney it really should make us all wonder.

When the WTC was exploded in 93, Clinton said: "We will find those responsible & bring them to justice," which is what he did. In 01 we were told Bin Laden would be captured, "Dead or Alive." After the spending of some trillion dollars by a country whose military gets more than the GNP of most countries on this earth, where is Bin Laden? Like I said there is much more to this than we can imagine. Penelope gets it on the most human of levels & knows what it's all about.

Well, the rest of us are ill-equipped for dealing with evil of this level by Bush/Cheney. Don't forget, Bush's grandfather's rearmed Hitler all through the 30's right up until 1942 when they were finally shut down. Thug apples apparently don't fall far from the tree either...

[getoffmedz]

Penelope - With due respect to your ordeal, do not thank God but thank those wonderful people who helped you. The hug in the debris, the selfless woman walking you to safety and a shower and of course, your caring husband.

You are a fortunate woman. Thank them!

[Aristophanes]

I'm further along than you. I died (heart attack) and was resuscitated. I have some advice for you.
GET A DIVORCE. Learn to be happy again, either alone (no partner) or with some man who will make you happy. Or some woman, whatever. You're just clinging to an ideal that marriage is good and divorce is bad. Good marriages are good; bad marriages have to be dissolved, and divorce is the civilized way to do it. Better than murder.
When you wake up each morning, realize that your FIRST RESPONSIBILITY is to be in good physical and emotional shape, so that you can meet your secondary responsibilities to family, job, friends, etc. If you're miserable or ailing, you can't be good for anyone else, or as good as you could be. Yes, it's ME FIRST.
You didn't ask to be born, to be alive, but there it is. Women have some advantages over men, and men have some advantages over women. When you find a partner whose being matches yours, marriage is not work, it just keeps getting better. I had three working marriages before I hooked up with my wife, and we've been together since 1981.
Finally, stay locked in on the present. Not what happened 6 years and one day ago, not what will happen next week. Today counts. Read "Our Town" or rent a video of it. Memorize all of Emily's speeches.
LOVE YOURSELF.

[Moondawn]

thank you for sharing this story with us and may God bless you and to your wonderful family

[LondonInNY]

I read your story and it makes me want to cry. The every day existence of so many ordinary yet extraordinary New Yorkers was changed on that one day in history. Many died. Some lept to their death as an alternative to burning alive and others like yourself, stumbled from the rubble into the arms of a Good Samaritan. Yet, six years later, our government and the most corrupt executive branch in the history of the United States refuses to deal honestly and come clean with the American people. Instead, what we have is a party of people who have profited off of 9/11 DEATH. I get literally sick to my stomach every time I see George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and the rest of the American Mafia and band of thugs that work in or for The White House. I not only shop at Banana Republic but now I find that I live in one as well. And for the record the only 9/11 Heroes are the every day working people who died or somehow survived on 9/11 and the FDNY and NYPD that tried to save people from the WTC. No politician in America should be considered a HERO. Hero's do not live to tell tall tales of their heroism. Penelope, you are a hero for reminding us in an eloquent yet simple manner the painful reality that some of my fellow Americans encountered on September 11, 2001 in Lower Manhattan.

[Spookcatcher]

And as a result of the crooks and liars in the White House Our Congress and Senators, Millions of innocent Iraqiis are looking for a place for a warm shower to wash the debris off everyday of Our Illegal Invasion, Overthrow, and Continuing Occupation of their homes. What is the fate of a Nation that targets the wrong enemies, or spawns the policies that drive hate to destruction of innocents, to happen within its own country and to export it to others. We look more like the ones we blame whenever and wherever we do these things..

[dobberdoss]

If only Iraqis could get the same oppotunity to tell their story! It would make yours look like a day at the beach!

Sorry, thats right, Americans only think about themselves, silly me.

[mulegino]

This underscores that love is all there is, after all. Not meaningless erotic attachment, not passing infatuation, but timeless love, which moves us to sacrifice our own petty little whims and affectations for the object of our love. And we see that as we become selfless in our love, our love embraces more and more; our love outpaces our selfishness. Everything else but love fades into meaningless, as time passes, and we march into eternity. But love endures, because it is what binds parent to child,child to parent, sibling to sibling, spouse to spouse, friend to friend, generation to generation, and all of us to God, who is the sum of all that is lovable. It is, as Dante wrote, "that which moves the sun and other stars." It reaches out to enlighten all of us, even as it reaches inward to hold memories that are exclusively and intimately its own. If only the mass of humanity would learn to see others as objects of love, and capable of love, and see that love is indeed the essence of what it is to be human! We are not flies of a summer! Anybody who has loved, or been loved, wherever their life has taken them, has known hope and is capable of redemption.

[EvereaderinSC]

TLV I hope there will be lots more questions asked in the years to come on what really happened that day. I think there's a LOT more to learn. My wish is that people keep the pressure on for better answers than we've been given.

I know LooseChange 911 is controversial, but it asks legitimate questions. We need to learn what & how all that stuff happened - or even DID some of the things we were told happen really occur...

[cylindar]

Real goods!!

[TLV]

When I think of 9/11, I remember the story afterward of a woman named Laura who had her skin literally blown off of her by a powerful explosion in the lobby of one of the towers. She was on television in the months after, demonstrating an enormous bravery and ability to cope with the pain of recovery.

The story was supplied by Washington(?) was that the jet fuel of one of the planes had traveled completely down from way up where it hit and exploded in the lobby. That story seemed to make sense until the diagrams of the Twin Towers surfaced. In them, one can clearly see that the elevator shafts were staggered, not continuous from top to bottom.

[backhandpath]

It appears that perhaps your husband was having the same thoughts about family as you, and, I'd wager, at precisely the same moment as well.
I too was a house husband. Since then the only thing I've experienced with less bounce at an office party is to mention that I was in New Orleans for hurricane Katrina.