It has been really hard to watch coverage of the terrorist events that have shattered all illusions of safety and well being that this country has clung to for so long. I was on the phone with Mom and Dad when video footage of the second airplane being slammed into the World Trade Center was replayed. I burst into tears. “Oh, my God, oh, my God,” I wept while watching each of the 110 stories of that magnificent building pancake down, like some twisted scene in an action movie. All those people! All those people. All those people. Dying.

Destiny turned on a dime today and my little world came to an immediate halt even as the rest of the world gasped. I found myself catapulted into a time warp of sudden death. People missing. An impossible search. Not knowing. Not knowing. Not knowing.

When you’ve lost a loved one tragically and abruptly, seeing new tragedy unfold before your eyes sends you spinning. It isn’t that I’m suffering flashbacks. More like flash-forwards. Knowing what the families, friends, and colleagues of those who are missing are experiencing now and will have to endure in the near future. My God. The horror. The heartache. Pain beyond all imagining.

Even my physical body remembers how it is to suffer this kind of emotional trauma. My mouth has a sick metallic taste in it. I walk around distractedly trying to keep busy and then I stop suddenly to weep. I watch television for a moment and turn it off. On and off. On and off. I get the chills, followed by a feverish flush, followed by acute nausea. Just like when Earl disappeared.

The phone rings. It’s Karen. Her son, who was a firefighter, died suddenly in the line of duty in 1993. We cry together, knowing that the sorrow of the families is inconsolable. This is sorrow beyond imagining. On a massive scale not seen in this country since the Civil War, when we inflicted this kind of pain on ourselves.

Who is the enemy here? There are no uniforms. No swastikas. And the soldiers dying in the line of duty today are not just military. Those on the front lines of this new battlefield are cops and firefighters and paramedics. The latest news reports indicate that 300 of New York’s finest, including the Fire Chief and other chief officers, may have died as they entered the World Trade Center to do what they do every day of their lives – rescue people. The building shuddered and collapsed around them.

So much death. So much destruction. And all those families not knowing. Clinging to hope even as despair shoves its way into their consciousness with each passing hour and no one recovered alive…

Downey, Ray, Battalion Chief, Special Operations, FDNY, Fanning, Jack, Battalion Chief, HazMat, FDNY, Fletcher, Andre, Firefighter, Rescue 5, FDNY, Foley, Thomas, Firefighter, Rescue 3, FDNY, Coughlin, John, NYPD, Emergency Services Unit (ESU) Truck 4, Danz, Vincent, NYPD, ESU Truck 3, Langone, Thomas, NYPD, ESU Truck 10, Howard, George, Police Officer, NY/NJ Port Authority…

It has been nearly a year since I first apprehensively viewed the list of names that unfolded before me like an endless stream of sorrow. As I print out an updated list, I take a deep breath, struggling to stay centered, focused, allowing the pain I still feel to just be there, gently, quietly, even when every sinew within still wants to scream out in horror and outrage.

A poem by Dylan Thomas emerges through my fog of sorrow… “Do not go gentle into that good night… rage, rage against the dying of the light…” I remember one stanza in particular:

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

With the release of more than 100 September 11th books and the glut of first anniversary television specials, we’re being bombarded again with images of horrific loss. I watch United Airlines Flight 175 as it makes its fatal journey towards the South Tower, timed perfectly for news cameras to capture the full horror after American Airlines Flight 11 has slammed into the North Tower, shaking New York City to its very foundation. The upper floors of the North Tower are already in flames. And now this! The South Tower. The plane disappears into the side of the building, engulfed almost like the building has embraced it or hugged it. And then… the unthinkable. The glimmering Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapse in a terrifying implosion of steel, glass, concrete dust, and human tragedy. Rewind. Again. It plays again and again in my mind and on television.

Who was in there anyway! The names. The names. Who was in there from New York’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force Team, NY-TF1? Ray Downey. Jack Fanning. John Paolillo. And hundreds… hundreds of other firefighters. And what about the ESU guys from NYPD? Like our Emergency Services Detail here in Los Angeles with the Sheriff’s Department, not all technical rescue operations are performed by fire departments. Law enforcement plays a key role, too, nationwide…

As I review the list, I recognize the names of guys I’ve met at conferences, or whose articles I’ve read, or maybe I’ve interviewed them myself over the years. I didn’t know the NY-TF1 guys personally in the way I know our guys here in Los Angeles with CA-TF1 and CA-TF2, but I knew of them. Their names are part of the history of urban search and rescue… US&R… Ray Downey is a legend. Was. Chief Downey was so passionate about US&R and the need to be prepared for terrorist attacks that he would bang his fist on the podium at rescue conferences. It is hauntingly ironic that he ended up at the bottom of the largest rubble pile that any US&R Task Force Team anywhere has ever confronted before.

Another poem comes to mind:

A Song of Greatness

When I hear the old men
Telling of heroes,
Telling of great deeds
Of ancient days,
When I hear them telling,
Then I think within me
I, too, am one of these.

When I hear people
Praising great ones,
Then I know that I, too,
Shall be esteemed.
I, too, when my time comes,
Shall do mightily.

-- Chippewa Indian

Heroes… 343 FDNY personnel. Gone. 23 NYPD guys, including their whole Emergency Services Unit. Gone. Damn! And 37 officers from the NY/NJ Port Authority. Gone. My mind still cannot absorb all this. The names. The endless stream of names. The deaths of all these rescuers shimmer in my mind against the massive and incomprehensible backdrop of more than 2000 civilians missing or confirmed dead at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the crash site in Pennsylvania. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins, children, hard working people just going to work or heading somewhere on an airplane. Gone. Gone. Gone.