4 birthdays, 51 Years, and Thousands of Miles

Maggie: He's dead and I'm alive.

Jim: That's what I'd keep in mind.

- "Election Night, Part 2" - The Newsroom


Steve's first birthday after his death, I went to Venice, Italy. It was the last vacation Steve and I had planned, with hotel and plane tickets already booked and bought. His birthday was a mere two months after his death. Terrified if I stayed home I would harm myself, knowing Steve would want me to enjoy life and move forward, believing I needed to at least try and move forward even if I was still widow-fogged most days - I changed his ticket over to a friend and away we went anyway.

That trip I can only see in my memory as snapshots through a haze. I know I was hysterical. Not always in the funny sense but in the "unmanageable emotional excess" sense. Everything was, emotionally, to the extreme. I laughed inappropriately, I cried unstoppably, I fell down stairs, I forgot things, I couldn't figure out how to get into buildings. I sat in quiet moments trying to imagine what we'd have been doing at that moment in that place then I tried to go do all those things. I failed. It wasn't the success or failure that was important, and I knew it. It was the trying that mattered. But I didn't do it alone and we muddled through, hysterical laughter and all. In the end, going to Venice was the best decision I could have made. I'm proud of myself for having braved moving forward through my pain.

The following year I wanted to leave the country again. It felt right in my soul, to travel back to Italy. And, honestly, I couldn't think of anywhere else to spend the time. So I asked my remaining friends if they'd like to go but the time away and expense made it impossible. My father had died that summer and as Steve's birthday approached, I felt trapped in a pressure cooker. Only in a total panic, a month before Steve's birthday, was I able to make the commando decision to travel alone when I booked my trip to Florence, Italy.

I had never gone on vacation alone before, let alone in a foreign country. But I gave myself over to the experience and enjoyed my travels in ways I could never have imagined. I walked the city streets from 8 am to well after midnight. I explored museums, estates, and gardens the like that are only available in Europe. I drank copious amounts of red wine, ate miles of fresh pasta, learned to drink cappuccino only in the mornings and espresso only after dinner. In Florence, I found my strength again. And, being Florence, I found beauty again. The pure joy of finding strength and beauty refreshed my soul.

The third time his birthday rolled around Steve would have been fifty, a landmark year. A month later would have been our tenth wedding anniversary. I chose to move my annual Steve's-dead-travel-to-Italy-trip back a month, and booked myself to visit Rome. This time I was able to book months ahead and, though would have enjoyed traveling with a companion, didn't flinch at the idea of traveling alone.

But a complication arose between booking the trip and leaving. I met the Piper. And though I was constantly battling feelings that I was a adulteress whore for "cheating" on my dead husband, it was becoming clear to me I was in love. My trip was marked by visiting Roman ruins, and running back to the hotel to Skype. Visiting the Vatican, and running back to the hotel to Skype. Drinking from the aqueducts, eating gelato, visiting museums,  resisting the urge to jump into Trevi Fountain, and running back to the hotel to Skype.

I went to dinner the night of my wedding anniversary, looking over Rome's city lights, and came to peace with removing my wedding band from my hand. And when I returned home from my trip, I had someone special waiting for me. I was ready.

This is the fourth birthday of Steve's since his death. I'm not in Italy. I'm not going to Italy next month. I'm not traveling again until my honeymoon in May, when I'll be traveling with the Piper. We'll be traveling to Spain when we go.

But last night, because the night before an event is when I'm at my weakest, my Piper did something beautiful. After we tucked the girls in bed, he turned down the lights and presented me with a cupcake lit with a birthday candle. He suggested I make a wish for Steve, blow, and then share a special Steve memory. One of my favorites. And that's what we did. Together. I spoke of Steve, our life and love. And my piper sat with a smile absorbing every word.

I'm not in Italy this year. And instead of eating alone at a fancy restaurant, I'll be running kids to swim practice and fitting meals in between trips. I'll be checking homework and reminding everyone to do their chores. I will be yelling at dogs to quit chewing each other's faces off and trying to fold laundry. It will be pure mayhem. And I will love very minute of it.

Today my husband would have been fifty-one. Today I am thirty-nine. Today is so completely different than yesterday.

Happy birthday, my love.

"September 11, 2009" from Steve

Steve posted this on Facebook on September 11, 2009. I've written about what 9/11 was like for me. The following account is told from a good friend of his that, sweetly enough, still e-mails me football quips. Since I no longer have to my Stevie to keep me informed, it's an important thread that has kept me tethered. I believe those who've seen some of the worse that life has to offer understand the importance of all these little threads that lift us up. Thank you, St. Ides, for staying.

September 11, 2009

I've saved this email, from a good friend of mine, who witnessed the events of 9-11 first hand. He sent this out that evening. I've taken his name out, because I have not asked his permission to post this. Someday I'll write about how I felt that day... talking to Karen in Virgina, and talking to my Mom who watched it on TV and could smell the smoke for days in our house in Queens. But for now I leave you with words I could not have written any better or more poignantly.

This is a graphic account of what my friend saw, and is not for the timid...

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It was fuct up.... here's an attempt to recount it, just because it was so fuct up and maybe it will make me feel a little better if I get this shit out... warning, this shit is not for the squeamish, but it's exactly how things happened for me.

I came out of the subway at about 9:05, with a rush of people coming towards the subway, which was totally unusual.. however, I just thought "oh, some other subway line is probably fuct up"... until someone said the Trade Center was on fire.. then someone said a plane hit it... I looked up,and there was insane amounts of smoke, but it was blowing towards the east(away from me... more towards the Seaport actually)... I walked around City Hall Park, get a better view, and saw a fucking hole in the side of one of the towers with flames spewing out. All I could think was "wow, that's pretty fucked up, but no big deal, they'll put it out..." Then I heard that a second plane had hit the other tower, and that it was most likely a terrorist attack... you've got to keep in mind this is only talk among people in the midst of it, at this point even the radios had no clue.

I stood outside City Hall Park for about half an hour while I tried to decide if I should go in to my actual office building. It was at this time that I saw my first "victim" who was a middle-aged overweight woman, whose face was covered in blood. She walked alone, seemed totally fucking dazed, and didn't even look at anybody, just walked straight ahead. After being there for about 45 minutes, I noticed that NOBODY was going in that direction except for emergency vehicles, cops, and dudes with black windbreakers with the yellow letters "FBI" in the back,

I headed north on Broadway, following the herd. About 8 blocks later, there is this other rumbling sound, and people start talking about a 3rd plane hitting... Then someone with a radio says one of the towers collapses... No fucking way I figure, not collapse totally,maybe just the burnt floors tipped over... And I keep walking.. Eventually, I pass Canal Street, and Spring Street, the two next stops on my train, and the people there say ALL train activity is suspended. So I'm pretty much stuck..I turn around, find a good place to watch, and look up... It was so fucking unbelievably odd to look up and see only ONE of the twin towers. And you knew it wasn't because of the angle, because the grey-smoke-covered blue sky filled the space where the second tower belonged. I watched. And wondered why there wasn't any sort of water trying to put it out. Helicopter hoses,plane drops, super-duper-powered hoses from the ground. Fuck, you would think some technology today would be able to reach a fire at that height.But they couldn't.... Debris fell from the building... Paper bits flickered out like snow.Pieces of what I could only imagine as chunks of floor and ceiling fell away from the building as it burned.. heavy, but fluttering once it fell.. and then there was the debris that didn't flutter... the debris that as it was falling, you saw it had arms and legs... the kind of debris that when it fell, the whole crowd that was looking upward screamed and gasped and said"Oh my God!"... I saw at least 3 people jump/fall from the burning building...

Minutes later, the antenna at the top of the tower started to shake a bit, and the top part crumbled. And the bottom part fell beneath it.I'm sure you saw this on the TV many times over, but seeing it really happen, hearing the loud boom, and watching people break down and cry is just beyond words... At that point, it was a question of "How do we get home?" and "Will there be more attacks?" and the rumors in the streets were ridiculous. Some people said a third plane was on its way, some said the Pentagon was hit too(that one turned out to be true), some said the White House was hit, some said the Sears Tower in Chicago was hit... Some said that some Palestinian group took blame for the hit... I took everything with a grain of salt, but there was no doubt two planes going into both Towers was a terrorist act. And who knew what else could potentially be next...

Subways were still shut down. I walked several miles to 34th street,where I could potentially get an express bus back home. After waiting for an hour,it was obvious those shits weren't coming. I made my way over to the Abbey Tavern, had a bacon burger, watched the latest news, and waited for subway service to be restored. Oh yeah, I had a few pints of Guinness too. Took the 4 train from 42nd (that's another several blocks of walking) to125th, where I got the 6 and made it home by about 6:45pm. At this point, I have no fucking clue what kind of shape my office building is in, if and when I have work again. I imagine there won't be work tomorrow. And from some of the shit I have seen on TV, it looks like my building might be out of business for some time. (Hard to tell exactly where they are in some camera shots, but I think I saw my building and its windows blown out.) So I don't think I'll be making it to lunch the rest of this week...

How are people at AmFar? I'm sure they saw a lot of this too.... Anyways, thanks for the concern, and pass along the "I'm okay" message to any peeps at DL that care. Feel free to pass along the whole message, but it might not appeal to some people.

laters yo

"Holocaust Museum" from Steve

Steve had wanted to visit the National Holocaust Museum for as long as I could remember. I'd been only once before, with my mother and younger brother. Both are people who understand that I have a tendency to take things in straight to my heart with hurt so deep and hard that I frequently can't function for long periods of time afterwards. True to my own history, I couldn't speak for three days after we left.

I was terrified to walk back into that building with my husband. He was the only person who could convince me to even think of facing that horror again. The man who I felt safest with in the world, grabbed my hand and promised not to let go. And he never did. 

Eventually, he wrote the following. He did it to show he hurt, too. To show there exists things that change the way we view our world forever. It's one of the traits I loved most about him.

When we left the Holocaust Museum, we headed straight through the gardens to the art museum. Where we quietly sat on benches staring at some of my favorite artist, holding hands, saying nothing. We both hurt. Together. And we healed together, as well.

September 1, 2009

The saddest place I’ve ever been was the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Even after visiting ground zero of September 11, nothing has ever affected me more profoundly than the Murrah building, and this is for two reasons. First, the fence around the building was covered with children’s toys, the toys that belonged to Tim McVeigh’s victims. It was a stunning visual reminder of the horrific reality of McVeigh’s crime. Second, the people of Oklahoma City were not prepared for this violence. When I was growing up in New York, we were shown maps of Manhattan with concentric circles expanding from the Empire State Building. The circles represented the blast zone of a thermonuclear weapon and the Empire State Building was always labeled “Ground Zero” because this was where the Soviets would drop the bomb. I lived in the third circle, named “three to five miles”. New Yorkers have always prepared for ground zero; the good people of Oklahoma City had not. They thought they were safe, and that their kids were safe. That still breaks my heart.

I expected my visit to the National Holocaust Museum to challenge my experience in OKC , but it didn’t. The museum is profoundly sad, yet still manages to celebrate the lives and the spirits of those who perished during the Holocaust. Today we throw the numbers around like snowballs: 6 million Jews, 5 million non Jews. The numbers are so large that they defy any tangible meaning. But go to the museum and look at the photographs. See the faces. Read the stories. You’ll see that somehow those numbers begin to take on meaning, a horrible horrible meaning.

To those who think it is appropriate to carry posters of President Obama with a Hitler mustache to a Health Care Town Hall meeting, I challenge you to visit this museum to see who the Nazis really were. To those who think it appropriate to refer to the conservative right and their bloviated pitchmen as Nazis, I challenge you to visit the museum. “Feminazi”, “Soup Nazi”. We trivialize the memory of those who gave their lives as victims of, or as soldiers ensuring the defeat of Adolf Hitler and his tyranny when we use the term Nazi so loosely. One take away from my visit was this: The closest thing to Nazism in our culture is those who shout “Look, that one is a Nazi”. It is a disgrace I am guilty of, and I will never make that mistake again.

When I was 17 I believed in George Orwell’s philosophy that all war was wrong. My dad was a soldier in World War II, and although I loved my father I did not respect his decision to be a soldier. I believed he was fighting for a governmental ideology, sold to an ignorant mass as patriotism. I thought he was a pawn. About that time, PBS first showed the films of the liberation of the concentration camps. If you’ve never seen them then nothing I could write will ever prepare you for them. We watched it together, me and my dad, and when they were done through my tears I said to him “I am sooooo proud of you”. That’s what my dad did when he was 22 years old.

I kept thinking of that moment at the Holocaust museum. I’m still so very proud.