9/11/2007

Last night I was trying to remember what 9/11/01 was like. I have such scattered memories from that day. I remember walking in the St. Paul skyway from the YMCA to my office and seeing a crowd of people gather in-front of TVs that were mounted in a bank lobby. I slowed down and saw the first pictures of the hole in one of the towers.

I remember getting back to my desk and trying to call home. It seems to me that the phone lines where starting to go crazy and I couldn't get through at first. When I did get a hold of Wendy she told me she was seeing it on TV. I think while we were talking we heard of the second tower getting hit.

Somewhere in all this my manager, Diane, came by to tell me to go the hospital because Bruce was saying "goodbye." Since about January of 2001 my friend Bruce had been fighting lung cancer. He never smoked. For me 9/11 is a tangle of thoughts about loss both national and personal.

That day Bruce said goodbye to many of his friends and his daughter. He was moved from the hospital to some 30 miles away in the country so that he could die at home. I'm pretty sure Bruce was unaware of what had happened that morning. All his friends talked about the events out in the waiting room at the hospital and at his home before the ambulance got there with him.

There was a brief moment at Bruce's home when I was alone with him in the ambulance while things were being prepared for him in the house. I remember I was at such an utter loss for words. Bruce was fighting so hard just to have enough energy to survive the move into the house. I've always wished I could have said something, anything in that moment. I feel like I let him down by being so quiet.

I remember driving home from Bruce's and being aware that I was driving under a sky without jets. Our house is near the airport so the sounds of planes is just background noise to me. On that day it was quiet, and sunny, and blue skied, and so unlike the smoke that rose over New York. So unlike the pain Bruce was in.