As most of you are probably aware, my husband was killed on Sept 11 2001 at the World Trade Center.
I had come to terms (sort of) with the fact that my husband was murdered.
I had come to terms (sort of) with it being on our daughter's 2nd birthday.
I had come to terms (sort of) with being 11 weeks pregnant at the time, and our youngest daughter never knowing her father.
I had come to terms (sort of) with not having a body, or any "proof" that he was even in the building that day.
I had come to terms (sort of) with not knowing what happened to him and how he died.
I had come to terms (sort of) with the fact that he walked out of the door one morning to go to work and was never seen or heard from again.
I thought the hard part was over.
It's been almost 3 and a half years but it's still not over. A website was just launched which contains 8,000 photos recovered from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, for family members to look through and claim. I'm 600 photos in.
I know that my husband had at least one photo on his desk (of our daughter of course), possibly more. So of course I have to look through all the pictures. It's heartbreaking. Every picture is of a baby, or a smiling couple, or a bunch of people at a party, etc. And you just know that all the people in those photos are now orphans, widows, widowers, parents who have lost a child. And the photos, of course, are not all in great shape. You can see where they have been burned.
But every time I click the button to move on to the next picture I know that I could see my daughter's sweet, innocent face smiling at me, the way her father last saw her. Could anything be more depressing?