I woke up as usual. But this would not be a “usual day.” I came down from the loft in my log cabin that overlooks Teton Valley in Wyoming, and the frost was thick on this cold Sept. 11 morning, in 2001.
Like any other morning, I meditated, came downstairs, fed the cats and settled in to watch Good Morning America with my piece of cinnamon toast and hot cup of Red Label tea imported from England. At about 7:05, I heard Diane Sawyer casually say that a small piper cub had accidentally hit the World Trade Center. That initial comment was short-lived. After a few minutes of sporadic film, it became apparent that this was no “piper cub” and that this was “no accident.”
By 7:45, the events of 9/11 as we know them were well under way. Casually I thought, “Where was it that Ashley said she was now working?” She had recently taken a job in New York City and was serious about the move as an opportunity to further her career in marketing and, of course, to “wear wool again!”
I knew she worked somewhere down in the Wall Street area, but I did not recall the address. I wondered where her office was. Curious, I opened my green planner and address book, and without notice my life and world changed with the flip of a page. “WWT#2” was what I had scribbled beneath her name with an accompanying telephone number. I looked at the television. I looked at my planner. I looked back at the television, and by this time one of the towers had collapsed and the other was on fire from the second airplane attack.
I realized in an instant that my daughter, the love of my life, my little girl might well be in harm’s way. Ashley might be in one of the fallen towers. Ashley might not be alive. Ashley, my sweet Ashley, where are you? What floor are you on? Where is it in relationship to the flames?
I did not panic. Without thinking I said my prayer to the Lord of my life. It was any mother’s plea for help and guidance. In an instant I heard, “She is OK.” I then had a sense deep within my heart that “Ashley was OK.” My response to that initial news was, “Yes, Lord, I know Ashley is OK, but is she OK here or is she OK with you?” Every ounce of my being knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ashley was “OK,” and coincidentally with every ounce of my human motherhood I wanted her to be “OK” right here in this world. That was a question that would take hours to answer.
What transpired then was a morning of waiting. A morning of loneliness that can’t be described. There was no visitor, no food, no song, no sight, no word to distract me from my fixed gaze on the telephone. My prayer was that it would ring. That I would hear Ashley’s voice say, “Mom, I’m OK.”
I would have to wait until 1 p.m., and during those hours a million thoughts raced through my brain and every emotion was accompanied by a heart aching for the sound of a daughter’s voice. Looking at the television I became transfixed. I wondered what floor Ashley worked on. Was she there? Was she downstairs, perhaps having a cup of coffee? Did she go to work that day? Did she get out in time? Where was she?
As the day’s tragedy continued to unfold and as it became more and more apparent that survivors would be few, I wanted to turn off the news. Yet I could not. I saw the towers fall a million times. Every time I wondered if Ashley was in one of them. I did not know. I called my mother, and we exchanged a few words. I wanted to keep the line free in case Ashley would call. I just kept staring at the telephone. There was nothing to do but wait.
When the call came, I remember moving to the phone with a mixture of dread and expectation. Hope and fear. Urgency and trepidation. My heart was racing. It was full of pain by this time, and it was breaking in ways I had never thought possible. News came from my former husband with whom I had not spoken in years. I recognized his voice immediately.
The news was good. Ashley was alive and unharmed. She had been underground in the subway en route to work at the time the tragedy hit. When her train was diverted to Fulton Street, she came up from the subway to an amazing mixture of chaos and confusion. After hearing and discerning what had happened from a passerby, she immediately tried to call and found all communications were down. Without access to transportation she began the long, 85-plus block walk back to her apartment uptown on Amsterdam Avenue. Only when she got home was she able to make a phone call on a land line that was working.
My reaction after hanging up the phone surprised me. Of course I was delighted to know that my daughter was alive, and at the same time the grief I had struggled with all morning seemed at that same moment to intensify in direct proportion to my delight. I felt the pain of the mothers who would not receive the call that I just received. I wept deeply and my heart broke again, now in a million pieces. Joy and sorrow all equally expressing themselves in an instant of communication. I did not know if my heart could sustain the stretching it was being asked to hold. All the pain and all the joy in one place at one time. My only response at that moment was a flood of tears. Tears of gratitude and tears of lamentation. A sort of wailing that rose deep within.
I realize now the enormity of the human heart to hold polar opposites. I ponder the strength of the heart to endure and uphold life in the face of death. I went to a depth of feeling I had never experienced before, nor did I think possible. I am grateful to my heart for sustaining me through those wicked hours of waiting and for allowing me to express in tears my deepest sorrow for all the daughters and sons who were “OK” in the Lord and would never again be “OK” in the arms of their parents.
I felt a little like Martha at Lazarus’ grave when she heard, “He is not dead, he is alive.” I also felt a little like another mother who wept at the cross at her son’s violent, senseless death and her heart’s ability to sustain her through the ensuing three days of grief to then hold with equal strength the joy of His resurrection. The paradox of life and death held and maintained within the human heart. This realization is not so mystical. It is not paranormal. It is not “fluff.” It is truth based on the experience of one mother on one ill-fated day for six seemingly unending hours of waiting.
What I have come to see in 10 years of reflection every time Sept. 11 comes around is the sobering fact that we are all connected at the most fundamental levels of being. The level of the heart. A mother’s or father’s love for a beloved child transcends every racial, religious, cultural, geographic, political and economic barrier. This powerfully strong heart that loves within every human being is the same love that I have come to know as an expression of Divine Love.
My hope and prayer is that in God’s time all of us on this planet will come to live life out of Divine Love that wonderfully creates, protects, endures, sustains, delights and promotes life rather than a fearful life calloused by ignorance acting as if genuine universal love and compassion are arbitrary, prejudiced, bias or, at worst, nonexistent.
My heart has gradually healed, and I continue to see the mystery of life’s resiliency in the faces of Anson, Catherine, Emmeline, Casey (my grandchildren). I continue to hear the testimony to life in the sound of the voices of my beloved children, Ashley and Brian. There are no sweeter sounds than, “Mommy, I’m OK.”
— The Rev. Sandy Casey-Martus is an associate rector at All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito.
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