Ground Zero Redux

While many people (at least in the media) seem to be reflecting on 9/11 over this weekend, I wanted to write about my own 9/11/01. 


Greg was in the process of dying from colon cancer. He had been an avid news freak, and when 9/11 occurred, I had to turn off the radio and the television because being heavily medicated with morphine, and other assorted painkillers, Greg was stressing out. He wanted to know what was happening; he heard us quietly whispering.  


The morphine caused some pretty crazy hallucinations. Greg had signed with hospice on August 1st, 2001, and by 9/11, 2001, he was extremely anxious about dying, what was happening to his body and what was left of life. He occasionally talked to ghosts -- I heard him talking. He had a full blown conversation with Louie Dorcich; Louie had recently died earlier in the spring. Greg begged me to take him home to California yet that's where we lived. He kept tugging, pleading for me to take him home. 

On September 11 th, 2001, like everyone else I heard the shocking news about the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and flight 93, though I could not pay much attention to that news like so many people. In my house we had lost contact with the 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 the majority 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 - 41 days before his "tower collapsed."

(Post originally published here on Sept 11, 2008)