I'd like to begin by asking your patience and forgiveness. It is impossible for me to write about this experience in an objective way. I asked you to bear with it's rambling nature and the exposure of my own personal weaknesses in the hope that some kernels of truth and wisdom will pan out of this emotional turmoil we are all experiencing.
Very few things rattle me more than being awakened to bad news and it always seems to occur after a late night out. Perhaps it's the reminder of that awful September morning seventeen years ago when the sound of my mother's pounding footsteps and panicked cries woke me and I watched my sister and her husband futilely attempt to resuscitate my father after a massive heart attack. The night before I was at a High School dance to celebrate the start of my senior year. Two days and very little sleep later, I was at his funeral. His death was an unexpected punch in the gut and that is how I feel today: sucker-punched.
This feeling is only magnified by my experiences in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake in Japan. As many of you know, I lived in Kobe for three years until that city (along with Nishinomiya and Ashiya) was leveled by 7.2 quake that destroyed my home, my city and forever changed my life. Because there are so many similarities between January 17, 1995 and September 11, 2001 for me, I found my thoughts divided all day: reliving the horror of the past and experiencing the terror of the present. And make no mistake about it, I was very, very afraid.
At midnight, approximately 5 hours and forty five minutes before the quake, and with more than just a bit of cosmic irony, I watched the movie "FEARLESS," a Jeff Bridges movie about an airplane disaster survivor. At the time I didn't understand it but now I think it's the only movie that captures (in small part) that intense fear one feels on the verge of death. More importantly, it also captures that amazing moment of Grace where that swelling fear crests and then vanishes, leaving a calm composure at the height of calamity. I had that moment. As I was being tossed on my bed in the darkness, my walls crumbling upon me, I had that brief but clear sensation that even if I should die, everything was going to be all right. But when the shaking stopped and I was trapped in my apartment, my survival instinct kicked in...
4am Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. All is peaceful in New York except for me-I'm finally going to bed. I've always been a night owl, but ever since the earthquake, getting to bed at reasonable hour has been impossible. It's been almost six years and I still stay up until 4 or 5am. A friend with a little more insight pointed out that I was experiencing post traumatic stress- in my case: an instinctual fear of dying in the dark. It's been something I've been working on but unsuccessfully as of late. When Meg woke me up five hours later with her eyes full of tears, I knew it was going to be a bad day, I just didn't know how bad.
