Month: September 2025

My grandmother was a diehard republican. According to her, there was never a good democrat nor a bad republican. Only once did she say anything positive about a democrat and only once did she criticize a republican. I was a little kid when we talked about Truman dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. Even then I knew what we had done was wrong. My grandmother insisted atomic bombs were the only way to end the war. Many years later, she expressed her fury that Bush went to Hirohito’s funeral.

I’m from a suburb of Buffalo, NY but have lived in NM for the past 26 years. I retired from the NM Public Defender Dept. 10 years ago. On 9/11/01, I spent most of the day in a state of shock and disbelief. When I arrived at work, a colleague said a plane had hit one tower and the second plane was timed to be reported live. Another colleague told me the towers were gone. I was scheduled to be in court that morning. Partway through the docket, the courthouse was abruptly closed.

When I went home for lunch, I made the mistake of watching the news and seeing people who had jumped from the towers falling, falling, falling as they waited to die when they splattered themselves on the sidewalk.

The following day, I went to work and was asked several times if I knew anyone who had died in the attacks. I wanted to ask what I had done that gave them the impression I am so cold that I would come to work the day after someone I knew was blown up by a terrorist. But I didn’t. Instead, the following day I wore a tee shirt that I had purchased when I had been in New York City a few years prior. The tee shirt had drawings of tourist attractions in New York City including the twin towers. I had seen the towers and considered them incredibly ugly buildings. Unlike the romance and hope built into the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, the towers were huge, black cracker boxes devoid of personality or imagination. I considered my tee shirt a warning: say something I don’t like – such as suggesting I’m so cold I’d come to work after a friend had gotten blown up by a terrorist – and I’ll respond from my gut.

My emotional responses to 9/11 were about two weeks behind the rest of the people in the office. While my coworkers were recovering from the trauma, I was starting to feel the trauma for the first time. It was a weird disconnect that I felt I couldn’t discuss with anyone.

A few weeks after 9/11, I met with a juvenile client in my office. I had my law licenses and law school diploma on the wall behind my desk. The client saw I had graduated from law school in Buffalo, NY. The client said something about 9/11 and me being from New York. I don’t remember what I said. I do remember telling myself not to react or to say how I felt. That was harder than the times I couldn’t react when juvenile clients disclosed they had been raped by pedophiles.

I didn’t process the trauma I felt until 2021. Twenty years to carry trauma is an incredibly long time. That September, I watched all the documentaries I could find about 9/11. I thought I was done processing.

This year, I realized I am not finished processing the trauma. Last night, I was binging on episodes of Bones. The episode I saw was about 9/11. I cried through the entire episode. Then, I watched, for the third time, The Looming Tower – a documentary about how the CIA knew well in advance of the attack that an attack was coming but withheld the information from the FBI.

I take classes at New Mexico State University. I sit in classrooms filled with people who were born after 9/11. To them, 9/11 is history. To me, 9/11 is personal. To me, Pearl Harbor is history. To my grandmother, Pearl Harbor was personal.

Now I understand why she was furious that Bush attended Hirohito’s funeral.