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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
As a widow of Sept. 11 with a new baby, I am on America's patriotic payroll.
Jan 25, 2002 | "Every baby is born with bread under his arm." Eddie reminded me of this Spanish saying whenever we talked about our shaky financial future. I was due to have our first baby in the fall, and we were concerned because I'd be unable to work at that point.
As it turned out, the saying proved true: When our son was born in October, I no longer worked. But there was enough money to take care of all of our expenses, and the promise of more money to come. Eddie, who died on Sept. 11, became the bread under our son's arm.
It is a bizarre time in my life: My beloved husband goes to work and dies when a plane hits his building. Then, as I attempt to deal with the loss, and learn the art of single motherhood, checks arrive in the mail, in various amounts, on a regular basis. One day I may receive $1,500 from the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund and $1,000 for supplemental needs from the Red Cross. Another day I may receive more -- from the United Way September 11th Fund, the New York Crime Victims Board and Social Security. And while the money comes in -- from government agencies, charities and special funds set up in the aftermath of the tragedy -- there is an additional chunk of change to be had from the Federal Compensation Fund, provided I accept it rather than choose to sue.
The arrival of each check reminds me of the debate about why 9/11 families are so significant, specifically as compared with families touched by the Oklahoma City bombing, and all other tragedies, past and future. Who deserves how much? I don't know. But it is certain that I am fortunate, along with the rest of the unfortunate affected by Sept. 11, to be associated with this particular tragedy instead of one that is somehow less important in the public imagination.
The checks also make me think about the way Eddie died, compared with all the possible ways he could have died but didn't. I think about the near misses of the year: What if Eddie hadn't gotten up after falling face first when he went skiing last winter? What if he had fought the crazy, threatening guy at the pizza place last spring? What if he had hit the embankment on the parkway, with me in the car beside him, last summer?
A death of happenstance rather than of terrorism would have yielded significantly different results. Certainly there would not be all these checks in the mail. Instead it would have been quiet and calm. I would not have found myself so high in the hierarchy of the nation's sadness and sympathy, a grieving widow with a post-9/11 baby, a newly minted American icon. This is the last thing I could ever imagine being; the last thing I could ever possibly want.
The only thing familiar to me these days is walking my 10-year-old dog, if, that is, I don't bump into the neighbors who either offer consolation for the death, or congratulations for the birth, or, very awkwardly, both. When I make a foray through Manhattan, I feel assaulted by the post-9/11 flags and all the rest of the godblessamericana. It's a marketing motif for store-window displays, some of them doubly dizzying dioramas of flag fashion in front of flag backgrounds. Frayed flags hang off antennae; there are little pins, patches, lots of jewelry.
