Those we lose never leave us. They live on inside us. This realization is what has made it possible to begin another phase of my life without my husband, Neil Levin, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center two years ago.
Every survivor deals with loss in a different way. Some have become activists, demanding answers from the commission investigating Sept. 11 or fighting for stricter fire and skyscraper safety codes. Others have focused on what kind of memorial will best honor our loved ones.
For me, the second anniversary of 9/11 is a catalyst to extricate myself from the hurt and negative energy that memories of the attack can still generate. It is a day that I thought would never come.
For the last two years, I have often been treated as a victim a feeling I had never experienced before. Even when I was helping to raise money for worthy causes, I often felt uncomfortable. Now I am ready to graduate not from grief but from victimhood.
When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked me to serve as liaison for the victims’ families, I was honored. I have been a privileged witness to the overwhelming public reaction to 9/11. No one could give enough. No one ever said no. Private citizens, unions and businesses continue to offer money and resources for any cause that might help heal the city’s scars and survivors of 9/11. Sometimes a company representative calls and says: “An employee fund has raised half a million dollars. How can you use it?”
We did use it. The architect David Piscuskas volunteered to design a memorial chapel for the human remains. The artist Bryan Hunt designed a sculpture so that each family can have its own memorial made from steel recovered from the twin towers. Children who lost a parent can take art therapy classes. The city can hold a memorial ceremony this year paid for almost entirely by private funds.
My office overflows with generosity from around the world: patchwork quilts, a 500-pound bronze sculpture of firefighters raising the flag, 3,000 tulip bulbs, flags, and original artwork, poems and music. We also serve as a barometer for the sensitivities of the families; would victims be offended by, say, Madame Tussaud’s displaying a heroic firefighter in wax? Schools and businesses call from around the country to ask what would be the most respectful way to observe the morning of 9/11.
Then there are the more delicate and wrenching questions, often asked by the survivors themselves. How do I ship ashes interstate? How can I obtain a death certificate for someone who did not hold an American passport? When will I know whether I will ever have something to bury?
I did not, I do not, have all the answers. All I can do is assure everyone who asks that the city is handling the search carefully and respectfully. I can assure the more than 1,000 families who do not have a body to bury that the medical examiner’s office is using the most advanced science to identify the remaining victims.
My heart will always be with those who have become my sisters and brothers in grief. But as I prepare to spend my last 9/11 anniversary as the mayor’s liaison to the families, I realize there are new ways to serve the city as an adviser to the mayor and as a board member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. There are new ways to serve the memory of my husband, with the State University of New York’s creation of the Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute. Now is the time to focus on renewal.
Christy Ferer is the mayor’s liaison to the families of victims of the World Trade Center attacks.
[This OpEd was originally published in the New York Times]
