9/11 – the Loss of a Friend

My dad told me that the day President Kennedy was shot was a hard day for him. Harder maybe than for others. It was a day that changed America. It was shocking and horrible. The end of the innocence in many ways for many Americans. But when he got home his dad wanted to have a talk; wanted to do the dishes with my dad. Definitely out of the ordinary. With wet and soapy hands they did dishes and my grandpa explained to my dad how he and his mom were moving out. They were getting a divorce. My dad’s life would forever be changed by that day. Strangely, that was September 11th for me. It was definitely an interesting day. For America. I will never forget that day because something happened that changed America, changed the way we look at ourselves and the world. But something happened to me as well, something personal, and I was the cause of it. It changed the way I look at the world and how I look at myself.

I was riding the bus to school that morning. I always rode the bus. It made parking easy and it gave me two unencumbered hours of homework time. I had graduated with two bachelors degrees from the University of Utah in sociology and psychology and had been given a full ride scholarship to the sociology departments doctoral program. It was the greatest time of my life. I was reading like a madman, talking and debating with some of the greatest minds in the field of sociology, and I was writing some great papers. It was amazing.

There was a specific professor that was inspirational to me. She was smart, funny, articulate and was completely self-made. She had brought herself out of a working class background like me and was making a huge impression on the academic and Hispanic communities. She was my inspiration. The thing was she was passionate and fiery and I loved it. I couldn’t get enough of her personality and opinions. Even though we often disagreed it was like candy to argue with her. She was amazing. She was also volatile. If you pissed her off you felt the wrath descend.

So the day before this professor had been trying to find someone in the department, another grad student like myself. And she was on the warpath. She was upset and fuming. I don’t remember about what. But I knew that if she found the grad student she might say things she would later regret. So when I saw the grad student first, I warned them. She’s looking for you and “she’s all kinds of crazy.” I’ll never forget those words because they would seal my fate forever. I didn’t think any more about it and went home on September 10th.

The next morning I’m riding the bus and everything is normal. There was a man who always listened to the news and of course he begins to hear what is happening in New York City and he begins filling us in. A plane has hit a building in New York. No details. The building is on fire. People are running. No real details. I get to school and find that another plane has hit the other building. It all feels so surreal. Planes hitting buildings. How does this happen? Who would do this? I, like millions of Americans, felt vulnerable and afraid. I knew I was far from the calamity but it felt so personal, so real.

I went to see this professor to talk to her about what was going. When I got there she was already fuming. Not about the attacks but about what I had said. The grad student hadn’t taken my advice but had come directly to the professor and used my own words to turn the professors anger against me rather than the other grad student. And it had worked. The professor was livid. Why, she wanted to know, would I call her crazy? I tried to explain that it was a turn of phrase, something we said at my house when someone was angry or looking for someone in anger. It didn’t mean actually crazy. But she wouldn’t hear it.

The conversation morphed into how I couldn’t be trusted. How I was a born storyteller and a fabricator. How she couldn’t believe what I was telling her because I was just trying to get my way, get out of trouble, and deflect the horrible thing I had said. This professor who I thought was my friend. This woman who had had me in her home, cooked my wife and I dinner, given us her cat. She wanted nothing more to do with me. Never wanted to speak with me again. The conversation became surreal. I was not only watching a friendship crumble before me I was looking at my academic life becoming meaningless. If a professor in the department thought I was untrustworthy then my time here was certainly limited.

I begged, pleaded with her to think through this. I was her friend. I had meant nothing by it. I would never do anything to purposefully hurt our friendship or my place in the department. As the towers fell in New York our friendship crumbled to the ground. Disaster. Hit by a terrorist for their own selfish reasons. And I was powerless to stop it. She ordered me out of her office. I left in tears. I tried to talk to the grad student but they refused. I tried to make amends but they wouldn’t hear of it. I tried to figure out why this had all happened and I couldn’t find a cause. It all seemed so senseless. So dreamlike. So surreal. I honestly couldn’t figure out why what I had considered so strong and unshakeable had, in a matter of minutes, crumbled away to piles of rubble.

New York City was in complete panic and America was in shock. What we believed to have been safe and secure wasn’t. One of our cities had been attacked by terrorists. They had killed thousands of our own people for reasons we didn’t really understand. We had been blindsided and I was in a daze.

Not long after that President Bush declared war on Iraq and I left the University of Utah. Both of us were trying to make something good out of what happened. Both of us were misguided. Something great came out of my leaving the University. I became a teacher, a bit sooner than I had planned, but I love it. I found my place in life. I’ve found my reason for living, for being. I’m still not sure we’ve done something good in Iraq. That’s still up in the air for me. Couple hundred people died there again just last week from two car bombs, set off simultaneously. Middle of Baghdad. Middle of the freaking city. We’re still trying to work it out over there.

Every year or so I try and make amends with that professor. I email her and tell her how much I miss our conversations; how much I regret whatever it was that was said to hurt her feelings; I do my best to make what I did okay. But she never responds. I’m not sure if she even gets my emails, although I suspect she does. I wish her well, wherever she is. I ache when I think of the friendship we could have had, might have had, if… I don’t know what. I’m not sure where it all went wrong. I’m not sure which decision led to this specific catastrophe but I regret it. I regret the loss. I regret the anger that I caused. I regret the sadness. I regret the conversations that will never be, the papers that will never be written, the damage that’s been done. I regret it all. I would take it back if I could. I would erase those days if she would let me. Where a friendship used to be there is only a hole now.

Take care of yourself Theresa.