Ground Zero

While everyone (at least in the media) seems to be reflecting on 9/11 today, I wanted to write about my own 9/11/01. Greg was in the process of dying. He had been an avid news freak and when 9/11 happened, I had to turn off the radio and the TV because Greg was heavily medicated with morphine, Ativan and other assorted painkillers. He wanted to know what was happening; he heard us whispering. The morphine caused some pretty crazy hallucinations. Greg had signed with hospice on August 1st, and by 9/11, he was anxious about dying, what was happening to his body and his life. He occasionally spoke with ghosts -- I heard him talking. He had a full conversation with Louie Dorcich; Louie had died that spring. Greg asked me if we could go home to California but we were already there. He kept tugging at me, pleading for me to take him home. 

On September 11th,  2001, like everyone else I heard the shocking news about the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and flight 93, but could not pay much attention to the news like so many people. In my house, we had lost contact with the outside world. We were dealing with our own disaster. We didn't have the time or strength to deal with the latest horrific public disaster.

When you receive a cancer diagnosis -- something attacks your body from out of nowhere, a plane flies through your building - so to speak. You automatically assume that you're going to die, and the world has the nerve to keep on going as if you didn't exist, didn't matter. People still have babies, get married, divorce, people die and planes fly through buildings. For most of us there's no media attention. No fanfare. You are pretty much on your own, sort of like those folks at the top of the World Trade Center right before the towers fell. 

Greg sleeping with our dog, "Pretty" on Aug. 25. 2001, 41 days before his tower collapsed.