9-11 post

I guess I should tell you of my 9-11 story.

I fell in love with a girl/woman 10 years senior to me.

As Terry Jacks would sing, We had Joy, we had Fun, we had Seasons in the Sun.

She left Spokane, to pursue her career at the national level.

She wrote me a few times, to tell me that she had a big nasty office in the Trade Center Towers. I wrote her polite, correct letters, saying essentially what I had said when she left Spokane. I love her, but New York would destroy me. Sometimes Spokane is way too big for me. I would not stand in the way of her aspirations.

Then that day happened. I knew she would have been at work that day. I found a private spot and cried for a week. Then I made contact with the Red Cross, and they put me in touch with the organizations that tracked down the victims. I said I'd do anything regarding arrangements, but if she had emergency contacts in the city, I didn't want to edge them out.

Almost a full year elapsed. In August of 2002, I received a phone call, "John! This is Liz!" I dropped the phone. Getting a call from someone you think is dead will do that to you.

It turned out that seven months prior she had resigned her job, and moved out of the city and to the rural up-state to alleviate the stress. She had a job as caregiver, and caretaker on a small farm for an elderly couple. The kind of job I always enjoyed doing. For a month after that day, she was a basket case, and the only thing that had saved her was the daily chores.

She was writing a list of all the people she had lost in the tragedy. Co workers, elevator co habitants, a woman she had lunch with, security guards...

For some reason she had wrote my name in the unlined area on top of the paper. Her phone rang. It was the organization finding victims, and survivors. It had taken them the better part of ten months to find her. She called immediately.

I have a recurring fantasy. She and I went out to a farmer's back pasture shooting once. I have actually dreamed that she and I are there again. Only this is her place she owns now in Upper NY State. She and I are taking turns shooting pistols...

Into the dying body of Osama Bin Laden.

I'm sure that someone can tell me why this dream is wrong.

Really I don't care.

I guess I should call her and bring her up to date.

It's been almost six months.

I was an exasperated lover, fighting with my fiancé at that time.

I miss that guy, he didn't know how good he had it!

And I can't see the screen again.