Losses

Where were you? 

That’s the question that so many people ask about 9-11.  We can’t seem to avoid sharing that information ourselves—we always have to tell everyone else where we were when it all happened, when it all changed.

I was teaching at the Scott Park campus of the University of Toledo that day.  I had morning classes, so I used to leave very early to avoid traffic.  At the time, I was living in Adrian, Michigan, so I had a 45 minute commute on a good day.  It’s so long ago, now, that I can’t even remember what time my classes met.  I think the first one may have met at 9:30. 

There were no other classes in the room before mine, and since I didn’t have an office at that campus, I used to arrive early and sit in the room until the start of class.  I’d often read a book or plan my class.  Either way, I was early, and I was cut off from the rest of the world.  This was the era before smart phones, before all of the classrooms were equipped with wifi and computer stations.

When my first student walked into the room, he asked me if I’d heard what had happened.  No, I told him.  A plane flew into the World Trade Center, he said.  Another student confirmed this and said that a second plane had also hit the other tower.

With no way to monitor events from in our classroom, and no real understanding of what this event would mean for my life, I went ahead and taught class that day.

It seems silly to say that.  I was teaching a freshman comp class, holding onto the last vestiges of normal, as the rest of the country was glued to a TV set, crying.

My next class started five minutes after the first, and in a different room.  It also started much the same way.  Have you heard what happened , a male student asked me.  Something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, I replied.  And then the tower fell, he added.  Another student mentioned the Pentagon.

Clearly, my students were more aware of the horror than I was.  I still didn’t know what to think, but now I knew that it was real.

A few minutes later, one of the building secretaries went to all of the classes and dismissed them.  The University was closed for the day, she told us.  I kept her in my room after the students left.  What happened, I asked.  She told me, and it was only as I listened to her—to another adult—that the horror of the situation started to sink in.

I went to my car and tried to leave the campus in order to go home.  Scott Park campus is miniscule compared to the main campus at UT, but since all of the students were dismissed at once, the parking lot was jammed with cars trying to leave.  I can’t recall how long it took me to even exit the parking lot.  I was listening to 92.5, Kiss FM, as I sat in the parking lot in my blue Topaz.  The excitement and horror of the DJs told me that this was, indeed, a major event.  Still, I had to laugh when I heard that Mayor Carty Finkbeiner had evacuated the government offices in Toledo.  Like Toledo would ever be a target.  Thinking that this was the Pearl Harbor of my lifetime, I called my grandpa on my cell phone.  (This was many years after he’d hurt me, and I’d forgiven him, and a few years before he hurt someone else, for which I could not forgive him.)  It was terrible, he said, what one human could do to another.  Terrible.

It was hours later by the time I got to Adrian.  My husband, upon seeing what was going on, had immediately left our apartment and gone to his mother’s house.  We met up there and began our long saga of watching CNN.  George had to work that night—he was on second shift at the time.  His factory refused to shut down, and his boss told him that they’d deploy anti-aircraft missiles to keep the factory safe if necessary.

I missed all of the TV coverage of the events as they happened.  All I’ve seen is replays.  This means that, unlike George, I never saw the Jumpers fall from the buildings.  I never saw the buildings themselves fall in real time.

When I went back to teaching on Thursday, my students and I were still in shock.  Instead of holding anything resembling a normal class, we spent the hours talking about the Towers, about our response to what happened.  In my memory, this went on for weeks.  I know that I was teaching at Jackson Community College at the same time—my schedule there was probably Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  For some reason, I can’t recall much of what those classes were like afterward—just glimpses of students sharing their connections to the horror.

As it became clear that the Taliban was somehow involved in what happened, I couldn’t help but remember some news from March of that year.  I was (and am) a news junkie, and I read online how the Taliban government chose to destroy the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan despite international condemnation.  I told my students about the event that day, I was horrified to learn that they didn’t know about the Taliban or what was going on in Afghanistan.   I gave them a short lecture, and I wondered what they wound up thinking on 9-11.  Did they remember what I’d told them about the Taliban?  Did it somehow help them to have some sort of context?  Even back in March, I’d seen the destruction of the Buddhas as a dangerous thing—it seemed like the Taliban was deliberately thumbing their noses at world opinion.  I had no idea how deeply their hatred ran—that it would be so deep that they would shelter a world-renowned terrorist organization like al Qaeda.  But, as the demolition of the statues made clear, they didn’t care about world opinion.

Just as I managed to get my head in order again after 9-11, my friend Jean Flath died on September 25, 2001.  Jean was abroad, living in Italy for a month while her sister was a runway model in Milan.  I got the call telling me of Jean’s death that night.  Kavita, a mutual friend, was the one that let me know.  At the time she called, I was on another call with a mutual friend, but I could hear the tears in Kavita’s voice, and I knew this was an emergency.

Kavita asked me to call our mutual friend, Carrie.  Well, Carrie was a mutual friend of Jean & I—she and Kavita had had a falling out.  I’ll always regret that call.  When Carrie answered, I asked her if she were sitting down.  No, she said.  You need to sit down, I told her.  You have bad news, she asked.  Yes, I replied.  Is it Wayne, she asked.  Wayne was her husband at the time.  No, I said.  Are you sitting down?  Yes, I am, she answered.  Jeanie won’t be coming home from Italy, I told her.  What do you mean, Nancy, what do you mean, Carrie cried.  Jeanie passed away.  We cried together, until the end of our phone conversation. 

Jean was 28, and died of an enlarged heart.  I remember telling my grandpa (yes, that same grandpa) about her death.  Was she on drugs, he asked.  No, Grandpa, I told him.  Jeanie was a good girl.  A Catholic.  She was even in her church’s choir.  Ah, it’s always them, he replied. 

And he was right.  It was always them.  Jeanie, as I learned, was a classic example of a good person taken too soon.  Would we still be friends, today, if she were still alive?  I don’t know.  I do know that I’ve glorified her a bit in my memory.  I learned at her funeral service how little of her life that I was actually a part of—and I mourned both the woman I knew and the woman I didn’t know.

Because Jean died overseas, the timing of her funeral was greatly delayed.  Her family was unable to hold a visitation until Friday, October 5th, ten days after her death.  The casket was open at the funeral home.  I’ll never forget how she looked there—the funeral home had applied too much makeup in an attempt to make her look like something other than a corpse.  Lipstick was cracking on her lips.  Her hands were visible, holding a rosary, and her skin was collapsing.  I went to the funeral home alone—George  had to work that night.  While there, I was completely dysfunctional.  I tried to speak to Jean’s sisters to tell them that I was sorry, but I couldn’t talk for the tears dripping down my face.  I think they understood.  Kavita, Amy, and I went out to eat at one point—going to Jean’s favorite Japanese restaurant.  While I was eating—and even managing to laugh with Jean’s friends—Carrie and Wayne arrived.  They left before I returned, and I was once again unable to comfort my friend.

George was with me at the funeral service the next day.  We stood in the church’s vestibule together with my friends.  Jean was a friend from school—we’d done our Master’s work together—and our fellow classmates surrounded me.  George looked around, a little lost.  Just then, they brought in Jean’s casket, and he started crying.  I’d had ten days to get used to the fact that Jean was gone.  However, since I’d been calling her Jeannie, George hadn’t realized that Jean and Jeannie were the same woman.  He told me later that he’d been about to ask me where Jean was when they brought in the casket, and he made the connection.  It was horrible for him.

I was months in recovering from Jean’s death.  The horrors of 9-11 and the horror of losing Jean became one in my mind, and I was unable to deal with it.  I can never remember 9-11 without remembering Jean.  Her loss was completely unrelated to any sort of terrorist attack.  She died because her heart was too large.  It was, sadly, the most ironic sort of death imaginable, because she had a metaphorically large heart as well.  Losing Jean took something precious and irreplaceable out of the world for me, just as we all lost our complacency from the pre-9-11 days.

So, on this tenth anniversary of 9-11, what I’m posting is not just a story of where I was that day.  Instead, I wanted to tell you all about loss.  I don’t think this rambling blog entry was fully capable to saying what I needed to say, but it’s all that I’ve got.

I miss you, Jean Louise Flath.