Dear Diary : September 11th 2002

Dear Diary,

As I sit here at my computer, sucking away at my fake cigarette, trying
to ignore the gut wrenching cravings of my nicotine addicted body, I
remember the pain of another day rarely particularly far back in my
mind. I've avoided speaking about this day as, being someone who
survived, I never really felt that I had the right.

No. I wasn't there. In America.

Nor is this story anything about those terrible events. I can't even
write about how they affected me, because, in all honesty, they really
didn't affect me at all. At least not until much later.

Perhaps you think that's terrible, and perhaps you're right. But you
see that wasn't just America's week of hell. It was mine. Mine and my
family's and...at the time.... I really had no more room for anything
else.

I saw it hit you know. The second plane. I saw it, and I watched it,
and I wanted to care. But I just couldn't, somehow it just didn't reach
me. Oh I cried. The tears poured unchecked down my face, dripping of my
nose as I sobbed my heart out while I was watching it. But I wasn't
crying for the thousands of people in pain and terror and grief on the
other side of the world. I was crying for myself, and for the woman I
loved more than I can ever explain who was dying of cancer in a
hospital ward just in the next town.

It started on the Saturday. That was when I first gleaned the notion
that this wasn't just another infection. Then Wednesday the 12th was
her 60th Birthday, I remember that of course. She died the following
Saturday. Saturday the 15th September 2001. One of many, unsung,
unknown and as I mourned the world mourned with me and, although I know
it's dreadfull to admit, I think I hated it for that.

Tuesday the 11th, of course, is very vivid. I had to work that day.
There was no - one else. I was trying to run my mum's business, a
residential home and I couldn't leave it unmanned. So I worked 14hrs
that day and didn't make it in to see her, as I had to be in from
8pm.... on call you see. That was part of the hardship. The world
stopped. I wanted to stop, and grieve and be there, for her... but I
couldn't.

My aunt, my mother's only sister, lives in America. Oh... no-where near
New York, but she was supposed to be flying out that day... trying to
get home before.....well she didn't make it. She got here on the
sunday. 9 hours too late. NINE hours too late to say goodbye. I hated
them for that too.

I know I sound incredibly selfish. Of course I do, I AM. I don't care
about America... I don't have room to care about America. I'm an
intelligent woman and I realise of course that many people lost their
mothers that day, not just in the towers but all over the world.
Somebody's mother dies everyday, every minute probably but I can't
explain how I feel, I don't have the words.

I want her back. I want to see her and touch her and kiss her and
cuddle her just one more time. I want my mother's life, her pain to be
headline news. She was so brave. So strong and gentle and dignified, so
caring.... even when it was her darkest hour.

She cried you know, when she saw the paper...could barely speak but she
cried and prayed and CARED. It touched her when she was DYING, why
couldn't it touch me?

Well. It'll be a year soon, and every where I'll see reminders of that
week of hell. Hear the tapes of people screaming superimposed with
beeping minitors and tubes. And through it all I see her smile. A smile
that could light up the whole world if they could just see it.

I know how America feels. I want someone to blame too. But there's no -
one. Fate? God? ... What's the point? She's dead, nearly a year dead
and so are they.

And this year, on the aniversary. September the 11th and 15th in loving
memory I am going to try to remember how to live.