What has not changed five years later

by Edward Cone
News & Record
9-11-06

I did not think I would be this sad this long.

That's my take on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. I apologize for being maudlin. I regret the lack of insight. And I promise that I am not about to go Oprah on you and start writing columns about my feelings. But it's been five years, and this is what I have to add to the national media-fest.

I was not as close to the disaster in New York as many thousands of other people, but I was closer than most. Two of my best friends died in the World Trade Center. Another friend was a central player in the drama that followed, and my wife's cousin was a cop on the scene. I felt like the Nick Carraway of catastrophe, or maybe Forrest Gump.

I have written a lot in this space and at my blog about my lost friends, Doug Gardner and Calvin Gooding. I've tried, clumsily, to keep their memories alive as the world tried to turn them into symbols or statistics, and I've checked in on their families, survivors in every sense. I've talked about Lisa's beloved cousin, Quentin DeMarco, who very nearly became the 38th Port Authority policeman to die that day, and about Howard Lutnick, who before he became the boss of the ill-fated Cantor Fitzgerald bond-trading firm was just Howie in college.

I hesitated before writing any of it, feeling that it wasn't really my story to tell, but went ahead because 9/11 happened to all Americans, and I thought you deserved to know what I was seeing up close. I thought I'd be done by now, through with grieving. I was wrong. I had never lost two young friends in a violent act of historic proportions before, so I guess I didn't really know what to expect.

I made a deal with myself after my first column about Doug and Calvin appeared in this newspaper in September of 2002: I would quit linking to the column at my Web site when I could read it through without choking. That's not going so well. This is the part that always gets me, my wife on the phone with an airline clerk as we try to get to Manhattan for Doug's funeral, five days after the towers came down. "He said he needed the name of the funeral home. Lisa paused. There is no body, she said. The clerk understood instantly and asked for the name of the deceased. Doug Gardner, she said, and started to cry. Doug Gardner, repeated the clerk, and he started to cry, too."

Let me be clear that I have not become morbid or gloomy or obsessed. I am not constantly overcome with sorrow. It's not like we walk around under a cloud at our house; on the contrary, everyone is happy and healthy. Irony did not die its predicted death that day. We put our kids on airplanes without excessive anxiety and spend lots of time in New York and believe that Bruce Springsteen was right, it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.

Our friends and kin are well, too. Both LaChanze Sapp-Gooding and Jennifer Gardner have remarried. Their kids have strong, whole families. LaChanze recently won a Tony award for her lead role in "The Color Purple" on Broadway. Howard rebuilt his company and made good on his promise to do right by the survivors of hundreds of fallen employees. Quentin was promoted to a key job at the ground zero site and is still wrong when we argue football. It's not like a movie, there are no simple happy endings -- Doug's dad died this year, and Cal's has been ill, and everyone lives with their losses -- but life has gone on in some very nice ways.

I think about my friends a lot, less than I used to, more often at this time of year. I think about how they died, what they are missing, who misses them. It does not feel the same as what I felt after my dad died young or my stepfather died slowly. Maybe the sadness is compounded by the strangeness of the situation, the loss of certainty and freedom from fear, the magnitude of the events around their deaths, the open-ended conflict in which this country finds itself. Maybe it will never completely go away.

When I wrote about 9/11 on its first anniversary, I wondered if the experience had changed me as we were all supposed to have been changed, and concluded that "in fundamental ways it left me much as I have been, just sadder and older and with two fewer friends."

Five years in, that's still pretty much the story.

Copyright © 2006 - The News & Record

Contact Edward Cone (www.edcone.com) at [email protected].

Comments

[G/]

NYC is eeriely quiet and beatifully radiant today as it has been every 9/11 since the first day of madness.

Sad is my usual overwhelming emotion when I open up this day in my mind's eye (or when it gets opened by others), but this past week all I've really felt has been ANGER. And today, lots of IMPATIENCE with the few strangers I've had to interact with in some manner.

Thanks, Ed, as your comforting words allow me (others?) to remember we are not alone, which is not something I always remember in moments when my brain switches to irrational mode.

Your best will be given to LaChanze this afternoon, and hopefully Jennifer, et al.

[jw]

"Let me be clear that I have not become morbid or gloomy or obsessed."

But perhaps you've become grounded in a different way. Little things seem less important. Connections feel more urgent.

I've always believed that people do not change, not deeply, not profoundly, without some huge action happening. This huge action changed us all.

Some more than others.

[Britt Whitmire]

It is very easy for people like me (who lost no family or friends on 9/11) to go on with our lives and pause a few times a year to think about what happened that day. To the families, it is still going on and it hurts with every birthday, graduation, anniversary, or family gathering. I know the victims would want us all to go and live full, happy lives, but the map to that destination can't be found. Sometimes you have to pause along the road until your will and your mind will let you take another step. That's okay, too.

The silliest thing: I got my dog as a result of 9/11. I looked around in the fall of '01 and challenged myself to open my heart and I adopted this little Pit Bull. She has seen me through some hard times (divorce, unemployment) and she has always been my best friend. I'd like to think that the spirit of some of those good people we lost are in my little dog and they're lifting me up through her.

Ed, maybe the next time you have a good glass of wine, or enjoy a good steak, or see a particularly beautiful sunset in Paris, you can enjoy it that much more, knowing that you are taking it in for yourself and your lost friends. Life's sweetness made sweeter.

[G/]

"Little things seem less important" **--jw (above)

Wow. That is what I crave to believe again. But today, and most day, I am reminded by how IMPORTANT the little decisions were five years again in determining which of my friends are alive and which were murdered. (The usuual, "Who went to work early/late for an unknown reason?...Who took that day off/decided to catch an earlier/later plane", etc..).

I HOPE to get back to the point of view that the little things aren't really all that matters one day, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. One day, not this year, however.

Peace.

[jw]

I meant little irritants. Little things that used to bother me, mean even less now. And you're right, little things that SHOULD be important may get the attention they deserve.

[chip atkinson]

Ed- I have yet to lose a parent or sibling or close friend. But everytime I hear of folks who have, I'm flooded with gratefullness for the relationships I hold dear.

At the same time, I am grateful that you had such close friends and family. It is fitting for you to mourn, because your loss is great. It is also fitting to recognize your loss would be far less painful had you not loved and been loved so well.

[Ed Cone]

Thanks, Chip, that's a very nice and comforting thought.

Here's the eulogy I gave for Calvin, if anyone wants to know a bit more about him.

[David Boyd]

That's a beautiful eulogy, Ed. Maybe my favorite thing I've ever read by you.

[Ed Cone]

I just recieved an email that goes to the heart of my purposes in writing this column and its precursors:

Seeing the planes hit the towers seemed more like a video game than anything real to me. Your columns changed that by making the impact of that day very real for me.

I do not completely understand the overwhelming sense of sadness I feel over the loss of your friends...It may seem strange to thank you for inducing my sadness, but sharing such a personal story has touched me deeply in a way that feels necessary to understand 9/11 a little better. So thank you for sharing such a personal story.

Thank you. It happened to all of us.

[beth]

Ed, I really enjoyed reading this, thanks for sharing, it's very powerful stuff.

[Samuel Spagnola]

Ed, the part about the airline clerk was incredibly moving. Thank you for sharing this story.

[Steve T.]

A friend of mine had an experience similar to that with the airline clerk. A cousin-in-law he loved dearly was an investment lawyer in Manhattan, working for a firm that had recently moved its offices, but my friend didn't know where they'd moved to. So on 9/12 he called NYC directory assistance and gave the firm's name. A typically robotic (but human) voice read out the number, and he asked for the address. The operator started a standard spiel about being able to find it in his directory without being charged a fee, and my friend lost it, yelling into the phone, "Just tell me if they're anywhere near the World Trade Center!!!!"

The professional robotic tone of voice disappeared instantly, and the operator gave him the address -- safely uptown -- and added very quietly, "Whoever they are, they're allright."

[Anton Zuiker]

Thank you, Ed, for your beautiful, human sincerity.

[Nathan Kunkel]

Thanks for opening your heart - you've got a lovely way with words, and reading your search for balance and sense in the aftermath of a non-sensical event has been moving. I obviously didn't have the same close ties to Calvin and Doug as you did during our years at Haverford, but in my own way they have also been my primary connection to the profoundity and sadness of 9/11. Finality is how you see it, and your take on it is as good as any.

I wish you well, Ed Cone.