9/11/2001-9/11/2011: Family Remembers Loved Ones
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Families, and individuals, grieve in different ways. Some reach for healing through public engagement and connection; others retreat.
The losses sustained by the families of the Rhode Islanders who died on September 11, 2001, have manifested in as ways as specific as the individuals who were taken from their loved ones on that day.
Some, like the Nassaney family, have channeled their grief into a very public event--the annual Shawn M. Nassaney Cross Country Run/Walk that funded several scholarships in their son's honor. Patrick Nassaney, Shawn's father, opened GoLocalProv's series on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 with a candid, heartbreaking video interview.
Today, Marilyn Trudeau, the mother of Amy Jarret, a North Smithfield girl who'd gone to Mount Saint Charles and become a flight attendant who died on 9/11 on United Flight 175 bound for Los Angeles, overcomes her personal grieving to close the series with a sharply felt story of a mother's grief.
"Amy was an extremely thoughtful person...
She was always putting other people before herself, that caretaking kind of person. She was always remembering people's birthdays with a little card. She was remarkable, remembering people that she would meet, remembering their names and their children's names. She loved when she had people on her flights who had adopted children and were flying home with their brand-new child. She just loved that. Even after the plane landed, she would go over, not interfere, but stand on the fringe and watch while the family all rushed to see the new addition. She got a lot of joy out of watching.
She loved being a flight attendant...
We would razz her in the family, saying 'Amy, when are you going to get your feet on the ground?' But she never did. She worked her way up and just really loved what she did. And of course she enjoyed the perks of travel. She had a boyfriend. They were planning on going to Italy, and [after she died] I had to clean her room, and the airline tickets were on her bureau. It was just so sad.
The Tuesday before Amy died, on September 4th, my grandson was born. We'd waited eight years for this baby! We were ecstatic, on top of the world. In one week's time, we were in hell. We were plunged to the depths.
It's with you every day...
As time went on, people get on with their lives, and sometimes you tend to fall into complacency, but certainly for us it's with us every day. Whether it's in our hearts, or we see it on TV, in the newspaper, in a magazine, we have constant reminders.
I have a little granddaughter who's four, and out of the blue she said to me the other day, 'Do you have any more pictures of Auntie Amy?' It went through me like knives. She's four and never knew her. She knows the talk, and what her parents have told her, but she was just asking. Or I'll be out in the car, having a good day, and a song will come on the radio that was her favorite song. It goes on and on.
After Hurricane Irene, our power was out for six days and I'd lost everything in my refrigerator. I had to start all over, so I went to the store. There I am, boxed in the checkout line, nowhere I can go, and there are all those magazines at the checkout. I look up and there's the front page of the magazine with the tower exploding. My eyes just filled up with tears.
I'm just trying to do everyday normal things, but there are so many reminders...
That's something the families have had to work on, how to deal with, over the years, the constant bombardment on TV, on the news.
I've been to New York many times during the last ten years but I have not been to Ground Zero. I could not bring myself to do it.
I think for those of us who never buried their loved one, we never had that closure. Amy went to work that day. It's like she literally just disappeared. I recall our last conversation. Amy said, 'I'm leaving Tuesday,' and Amy never worked Tuesdays, never. She received a call from another flight attendant who asked her to fill in, and she said yes. So our last conversation was, 'I'm leaving Tuesday, Mom. I'll be back Thursday night, and I'll give you a call when I get back.' She left for work and disappeared.
If they'd been able to recover something it would have helped. We never had that closure of when you bury someone. We don't have that. Although I met a woman in Florida, through 9/11 victims' families, who told me she'd buried her son three times. First, they'd found what they called 'shards;' it could be an inch, and through DNA they knew it was her son. So they buried that, buried him. Then a few months later they got another call, and it was another shard, and they buried it, buried him. And then they got another call.
So many stories.
Amy died at 28 and I only think of Amy as 28. As the years went on, people said to me, 'How old would she be now?' My mind was stuck at 28. I couldn't even do the simple math. It didn't compute. In a sense it all ended there.
What is the world missing?
She always did want a family. She'd mentioned that different times. She would have enjoyed having a family. We keep her memory alive in the family. Two of my grandchildren have her first and middle names as their middle names. And one of my grandsons was actually born on her birthday.
I hope people might do some act of kindness on Sunday. Put out a flag. Even a small act of kindness for someone on that day. My nerves are not the best in anticipation of that day. I just try to go on with the living, and enjoy them.
We'll never forget.
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