It has been just a few weeks and a hundred years since our last encounter.
“Hey,” I say as we embrace.
“Hi, Dad,” she says, attempting to squeeze the breath out of me.
Arm in arm, we turn to face the windows. Beyond and below lay two immense, square pools; memorials to victims of mass murder.
Just four years old on that clear, late-summer morning in 2001, Kiara sat on our living room floor watching a Disney film as her mother and I witnessed the unmitigated horror unfold on a television in an adjacent room, her infant sister Dana cooing on my lap.
Seated, a server takes our orders.
Over the growing din, I ask: “How’s work?”
She rolls her huge brown eyes. “Crazy busy, but good,” she says, dipping a piece of bread into a small bowl of olive oil.
For more than three years she has worked at Barasch & McGarry, a law firm located a few blocks from Ground Zero — first as a claims administrator, now as a team manager. The firm specializes in assisting clients who are seeking settlements from the Victim Compensation Fund, the monies appropriated by the federal government for those who suffer from 9/11-related illness and injuries.
Thanking her again for agreeing to this interview, I ask the most obvious question first: How has this experience changed you?
“I’ve become more sensitive to people, not as quick to judge,” she says. “After speaking with over a thousand clients and listening to their stories, I’ve realized you don’t know what might be going on with someone, what they’re not verbalizing.”
The server refills our water glasses.
“My training officer used to say …”, but I pause, wanting to get it right. “‘Try to leave everyone you encounter better off than before they met you.’”
“That’s good,” she says. “I like that.”
Noticing a toddler seated near us, she smiles and waves to the child who quickly turns his head away. He then looks back and waves, returning her smile.
“So yeah, I’d say I’ve become a lot more patient with people, and I think that’s a direct result of this work,” she continues. “But I also had a good example in mom, watching her when grandma was sick, now all the stuff she does for grandpa while somehow juggling her work. She’s amazing.”
On her first visit back home after moving into Manhattan and starting with the firm, my wife asked how things were going at the then-new job. Through welling eyes, Kiara somehow managed a smile and responded “Good.”
I ask if she still finds herself moved to tears.
“Sometimes. I’ll get a call from a client’s relative telling me they’ve passed. But we develop the same emotional guardrails as first responders, nurses, doctors. I don’t have to tell you; it’s self-preservation. My mantra has become: ‘No more tears left to cry, just help left to give.’”
A dropped glass shatters on the floor, startling me.
“You OK?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I’m just more on edge when I’m down here.”
“It makes sense,” she continues. “I’ve learned so much about so many different medical conditions doing this work, but the one thing everyone seems to share is PTSD. And even though most of my co-workers and I were too young to remember anything from that day, we feel like we suffer from it as well, as a result of the stories we hear from clients every day.”
Nodding, I tell her I’ve seen studies that have demonstrated this to be possible
“One of my fears is that by guarding myself too much the attacks could become an abstraction, like something from history class,” she says. “Every once in a while, I’ll go online and watch the footage from that morning, compilation videos. It brings it back home.”
Knowing how difficult it can be to deal with the public, I ask how she handles any impatient clients.
“To be honest, most people are great,” she says with a shrug. “And even when there’s an issue, it’s usually just a misunderstanding, quickly resolved.”
I wonder aloud if the work has caused her concern for my health and wellbeing. She raises one eyebrow in response; a talent inherited from her mother.
“Are you kidding? Any time I hear you cough or mom says you’re not feeling well, my mind starts to race with possible ailments, like a medical student who thinks everything is a symptom of something fatal!”
Grimacing, I shake my head and apologize.
“Not your fault,” she says standing. “Be right back.”
The server approaches. Declining dessert, I request the check. Indicating the windows, I ask if it’s ever difficult for him to work here.
“I just came to this country right before this happened,” he says looking toward the glass. “Yes, sometimes I think of all the people, of their families and it makes me very sad. But now, you look out there, it is so hard to believe.”
Leaving the restaurant, we walk slowly around the cavernous, black granite memorials. Built directly into the footprints of the Twin Towers, the names of the almost 3,000 people murdered here are incised into bronze plaques that frame the perimeter of each pool.
The crowd is thin, mostly tourists. As we turn the corner of where the North Tower once stood, two men in their late teens are loudly discussing one of the inane conspiracy theories that sprang to life in the wake of the attacks. Breathing away my anger, I continue. After a few steps, I realize she’s no longer by my side. I turn to see her glaring at them with a look that would wither Mike Tyson. After staring them into submission, she catches up to me.
We find the names of John Perry and John Burnside — a cop and firefighter I knew who were killed here. As I run my fingers across each name, I can see their faces, forever young.
After moving on, she says: “Those guys back there; I know they’re just dumb kids, but I was a dumb kid once. How come it was never ‘my way or the highway’ with you, like some of my friends’ fathers?”
Stopping, I turn to her.
“Because I trusted you’d figure things out for yourself. But mostly, I knew I had to pick my battles, be willing to sacrifice some to win the war.”
She nods but doesn’t say anything.
“And now here we are; two adults, hopefully friends, comfortable in each other’s company. I think we both won.”
“Hopefully?” she says, again with that eyebrow.
As we walk toward the subway, I ask for some final thoughts about how the job has affected her.
“I worry less, appreciate life more and try not to take my health for granted. I appreciate you more, what you and your friends went through here, that’s for sure.”
She pauses, tilting her head back. I follow her gaze to the top of the 1,776-foot-high Freedom Tower — the new World Trade Center — a symbol of hope, of refusing to surrender to terror.
“You guys raised me to appreciate how lucky we are to be American. But after all this,” she says, waving her arm. “I’m so proud to be a New Yorker, to have been born here. Now living and working here has made me feel more a part of it, of its history.”
I tell her I get it, that I know the feeling well.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she says. “It’s a tough place; expensive, crowded, rude and sometimes dangerous. But to take a hit like 9/11, and come back the way we have, it just shows tremendous courage.”
She takes a long pause.
“Sometimes I try to imagine what I would have done that morning, or what I’d do if I’m ever in a similar situation. Is that weird?”
“Not to me,” I say. “It may be an aspect of PTSD, but it means you’re probably more aware of your surroundings than the average person … and that’s a good thing.”
Arriving at the subway, we hug goodbye. She promises to text when she gets to her apartment.
As I watch her descend into the station, a montage of memories begins to play, her life flashing before my eyes; a fast-forward timelapse of images from the moment she was placed in my arms to the wonderful young woman she has become ... and everything in between.
This article is written in memory of NYPD Police Officer John Perry and FDNY Firefighter John Burnside.
