“9/11 widow: Do I really want the truth?”

Over time, I’ve read innumerable accounts about the events of 9/11/2001 in New York City and its effects on people. This one in Salon.com, told by 9/11 widow Alissa Torres — “Do I really want the truth?” — is particularly gripping:

For the past eight years, I’ve had a recurring dream about my husband, Eddie Torres. It starts the same way: We kiss, we murmur how much we miss each other, how much we love each other. “Why can’t we be together like this all the time?” I ask, but he says nothing. In his silence, my joy turns to anger, which turns to rage. “You’ve never even met our son!” I scream.

And then I wake up, and I remember the truth. The truth, kind of.

My husband died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, on his second day of work at the brokerage company Cantor Fitzgerald. I was pregnant with our son. In the days and months that followed, I worked tirelessly to find out the rest of what happened. My questions started small — Which tower? What floor? — and became thornier. Why did this happen? What was the government’s involvement? What were the last minutes of his life like?

One of the ways Torres has tried to cope with her uncertainty about her husband’s fate is the following:

The same could be said of all 9/11 stories, real or fictionalized. I avoid all of them like poison. I even get scared when I overhear someone talking about their 9/11 experience, even if it was from the safety of their home, watching the events burst forth on the TV screen. I am afraid they will say something that will alter what I know, the thing that’s kept me OK all these years. Because in the absence of concrete facts about how my husband died, I created my own story.

My story is kind of a Hollywood movie, too, but it gives me comfort. Here’s how I see it: Eddie looks out the window into a clear-blue sky, the kind of view you only see on postcards, and he smiles at the view he will now enjoy every day. A plane zooms into the frame — cut to Mohammed Atta, the pilot, almost the same age as Eddie, as the plane dips slightly and crashes into the building a few floors below. Lights flicker out. Screams. The tower trembles. A woman cowers under a desk on the floor as crowds trample toward the nearest stairwell. “You can’t stay here,” Eddie says in a calm voice, helping her to her feet. “Come with me. It’ll be OK.” They run together from stairwell to stairwell, but it’s too congested, the air is getting thick with smoke, the heat is unbearable. Instead, Eddie breaks a window and they stand there, holding hands, contemplating the fall below. Maybe he thinks of me. Maybe he thinks of everyone he loved. “This’ll be just like skydiving,” he says. They kiss and jump together. Shock of the blue sky and then: The screen goes black.

Here very simply and honestly we see the power of story — hopefully to ease this young woman’s pain, to provide her some measure of solace:

I put this story together over time, based on what I knew, what I speculated based on Eddie, and, of course, what I hoped. Since I was already embellishing the story — before I imagined the best that could happen, I certainly entertained the worst — why not add something sweet to lessen the horror?

“Why not add something sweet to lessen the horror?”

Think about the raw human emotion behind that instince.

And take a moment to say a prayer for Alissa Torres, her child, her husband Eddie, and all the victims and survivors of 9/11/2001.

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