Ten Years After

As I watched the Mets-Phillies game last night the news broke that Navy SEALS had killed Osama Bin Laden. There are dates we just remember in great detail. For most Americans, 911 was one of those collective dates seared into the nation’s conscience. My life is so much different today from that beautiful September day. Ten years, a lifetime of change.



On September 11th I went to work early as I did any other day. I was conducting a training program in a conference room on the third floor of our corporate offices. It was about 10:00 am; we’d been meeting since 8:00. The conference room door opened and a coworker, a friend, walked in. Ashen faced, she said “planes flew into the World Trade Center. One of the towers collapsed.”


I looked at her for a moment. Her words weren’t registering. Just four months earlier to the day (May 11th), I had been on the observation deck of the towers with my older son, serving as a chaperone to his “TAG” (talented and gifted) class trip to New York City. There was no conceivable way, I thought, that those towers could collapse.


I cancelled the remainder of our training program and headed back to my first floor office. The building was silent. Everyone was glued to their computer screens watching the tragedy unfold.


My voicemail light was flashing. It was my wife. She knew I was scheduled to go to DC later that week and, in her immediate reaction to the attack, couldn’t remember if I’d already left. Her message was simple and very emotional. “Honey, there’s been an attack on New York and Washington. I don’t know where you are. Please call me. I love you. “


I called her and assured her I was fine. I also kept that message. Up until my arrest and removal from my office that message stayed on my voicemail. So many times after that day as my life spiraled out of control, I would return to that message just to hear her say “I love you”.


That night, we had a quiet family dinner. Our older boy was thirteen. He loved hearing about and discussing politics and history. He also had his personal memories of being on top of the trade centers. The attack had a noticeable effect on him. Our younger son was four. He knew things weren’t right, knew something “bad” had happened. But, he was with this mommy and daddy and brother. His world was secure.


Later, my wife and I sat close to each other on our couch. She wept and told me the world our sons were living in would never be the same. “There’ll be war and a draft and “D” is so close to that age. We won’t be able to travel”, she sobbed.


I, on the other hand, was pissed. I hated militant Islam. I was sick of appeasement. I wanted payback. And, I was convinced justice would be done.


Later that night as the emotions of the day poured over us, we made love. In many ways, my wife and I were closer that day than at almost any time in our twenty years together. That day also marked the beginning of the collapse of our relationship. Things began to change between us after 911. Like the towers, our strength, our bond, could not survive the intense heat of what was coming.


Between 1998 and September 2001, I had embezzled less than $150,000; after 911 until my arrest in August 2008, I stole almost $2 million. There was a connection. For a long time I denied it, but there was. I became convinced that we had to destroy evil while I ignored my own misdeeds. She worried about loss of life and lifestyle. She lost respect for me. I became angry with her that she was so quick to dismiss my views.


Then, there was the travel, the gifts, the new everything. I was proving to her that no terrorist, no war could stop us from being happy, having our dreams met. She accepted everything. Our friends accepted my extravagant largesse. But, inside I knew.


I could tell how she felt about me. I never heard “I love you” the way I heard it on the voicemail message. It drove me crazy. What I wanted more than anything was to be told “I love you”. The world was falling apart with anthrax, war, terror attacks. My life was falling apart. Still, I made lamb and crab legs and filets. We ate, drank and were merry while the world, while my life, went to hell.


And, I did stupid things and ordinary things and occasionally courageous things, all in the name of getting my life, my self-respect back. I was so sure what the future held on 911 as I sat in my home comforting the woman I loved more than my own life. I was so sure, yet I was so wrong about almost everything.


I greeted the news this morning with a high degree of ambivalence. In many respects, justice was carried out by the raid in Pakistan. If anyone deserved to die it certainly was Bin Laden. But as I watched the coverage, I couldn’t help but think about my Bible reading this morning.


“Teacher, what is the most important commandment? There are two. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.” I wondered what Jesus would say about the precision strike that toppled public enemy number one.


Like this wonderful country, 911 was a watershed event in my life. Like this country, in the name of right and good (and love), I did a lot of wrong things in the aftermath of that horrendous day. And those decisions had repercussions I couldn’t anticipate.


I lost the woman I loved after 911. It wasn’t her fault. Things could have been different between us, but they are what they are. If she’s happy, then I can be at peace.


And me? This morning I read Exodus 14. The Israelites were at the waters edge. The Egyptian army was bearing down on them. They were afraid and wanted to go back, back to where they came from. Moses called out to God. And God said, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the people to move forward.”


Move forward. Can’t change what’s happened. Can’t go back. Just trust and move forward. And the sea was parted.