on a day we will remember for you and with you
when memory loss is a blessing and a curse - of september 11, fatherloss and how we tell his story
I am not sure I have ever written about this day. This Tuesday I was in Westchester. At home in Chappaqua. I am resting and recuperating after another miscarriage. It is September 11, 2001
My Dad has been living with us while he looks for a place nearby. Recently divorced. He commutes to a new consultancy in Tribeca that has called him out of retirement. For all of his work years he has been a leading ad man in pharmaceutical advertising. This agency is famous and large and is starting a pharma division. They call on his wisdom and council. He knows this business and history inside out. He is 63. Dad commutes to Grand Central with my husband. No longer my husband, but that is a story for another day.
I am moving slowly after the procedure. My daughter Emma is at school. The news breaks in with emergency splashed across the screen of a plane flying into the World Trade Center tower. I know how very close this is to my father’s office and call. The lines are busy. Busy is so unusual. I wonder if the lines are down? Cut off? I keep trying. He’s there. “Pookie…I am ok,” he answers. His very even and calm midwestern tone, has a hitch. I am not sure I have ever heard him nervous or afraid. He tells me what he sees from his office window. I share what I can gather from the news. I tell him to try and make his way to Grand Central. Subways are down. Phone lines jammed. The clearest blue sky is shrouded in smoke and debris like ticker tape.
My husband calls the home phone. He asks about my Dad. He works at sixth in the 50s and is just hearing the news. Grand Central has been closed down while the city sorts what is happening. I hear the words “terror attacks” for the first time.
I can imagine my father in his dress shoes walking. And walking. What I cannot imagine is that he will connect with my husband on Sixth Avenue. They find one another. I have to believe this is no coincidence. They wait together in the crowded station for the possibility of trains running. Later that evening, they relay their stories and of the silent train ride home. The many covered in layers of grey soot.
A friend’s husband has carried a woman, a stranger, down the stairs of the towers on his back to safety. My brother-in-law has two cousins in the towers. One is pregnant. They are not found. His father and brother are New York City firefighters and are on the scene.
My Dad lost his own Dad as a young boy. I am sorry that I have not connected with him the way I would now if his dementia would allow. As he settled into a condo in town, and we learn of more loss, he is moved to connect. He knows in a way that I do not, what father loss looks like for my friend and her two small children. Dad attends one soccer game while the Mom tends to another. She cannot be on two fields at once.
In 2003, I have moved back to Chicago and he relays these moments. Sadly. Proudly.
We gathered funds for a memorial bench. It is placed in front of the tiny town diner where this Dad, who never made it home, used to love to take his family. Each year on September 11, long after the family had also left town, Dad would place flowers on the bench and send me a photo. He would also light a memorial candle. I think he knew all too well a life without a father, that I will never comprehend for him. Or for them.
Today he lives with memory loss. I share a few of the photos he has sent me over the years and tell him “his story”. We are his memory now. I am grateful for the nightmares that have been left behind. I tell him of the soccer visits and how they affectionately called him Grampsy, as we all do! Now they check in on him. “That sure sounds like something I would do,”. It sure does and is and was.
We will continue to remember and never forget.
Thank you for writing about this day. Xx
Powerful. Thank you. Love to you!