A poster-size black-and-white photo she took of Craig posing by the Seine in Paris is mounted above the mantel. His suits still hang in the closet, his slippers sit on the stairwell, and a pair of flip-flops emblazoned with the letters KBW–a gift he received from his employer, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods a few days before he died–are lined up beside the front door.
It’s been six months since Craig wore the slippers or the shirts that hang in the bedroom closet, some of which were recently removed to be made into a teddy bear and a quilt for Stacey and her new baby. Eleven days after her husband died in the September 11 terrorist attacks, Stacey gave birth to their only child–a daughter, Juliette, who shares a birthday and an uncanny resemblance with the father she never met. In the months since her daughter’s birth, Stacey has struggled to keep her home and herself together as she adjusts to life as a widow and a single parent at 31.
Of course, she is not alone. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 attacks, including at least 19 in the New Jersey township where Stacey lives, about an hour’s commute from New York City. Eleven surviving spouses were members of the St. James Roman Catholic Church in Basking Ridge; three, like Stacey, were also pregnant. But if it weren’t for another member of the St. James church, they may never have met each other. Parishioner Pam Koch, a certified bereavement counselor who’d stopped working a few years earlier, came out of retirement in October to work with victims of September 11. “[The widows] had all these things but they needed support groups,” she says. So she started one.
Initially, the group consisted of parishioners and a handful of Basking Ridge residents like Stacey. But even without advertising, its numbers soon swelled from 19 to more than 50, some traveling from as far as Long Island. Families of September 11 victims said they have been inundated with donations and forms for charitable and federal aid since the attacks, but they’d had to seek out self-help or support groups themselves. “No one reaches out to you about that. You have to find the groups–that’s what makes it hard,” says Anthony Bengivenga, the owner of a metal-parts company whose fiancee, Lydia Bravo, a registered nurse for Marsh & McLennan in the World Trade Center, was on her first day back at work after a vacation with Bengivenga when she was killed in the attacks.
The two were supposed to be married this winter. Instead, Bengivenga spent December looking for a support group to help him get through the holidays. He learned about the New Jersey Self-Help Clearinghouse (www.njgroups.org) where he found a few groups, though most did not include fiances or did not meet regularly yet. “Pam’s group saved me,” says Bengivenga.
He is one of two men in the group whose members come from a variety of backgrounds and religions but share a common bond. All of them lost a husband, a fiance or a son on September 11. “They want to be with each other,” says Koch. “They bonded before they walked into the room. It’s the easiest group in that sense, but it’s the most difficult group because the grief is so sharp.”
She has tried to soften it with the hours-long weekly sessions in a meeting room behind the St. James church chapel. Candles, flowers and homemade food like banana bread and lemon squares sit atop covered folding tables, alongside books on dealing with the loss of a loved one and handouts about the federally funded victims compensation fund and other resources. It is one of the few places where no one stares when tears spring spontaneously from Stacey’s eyes or gapes when they spot the button with Craig’s photo pinned to her shirt. “Everything just helps me here,” she says.
Since they began meeting in early October, there have been about 20 sessions, now drawing an average of 40 to 50 people. Members of the group range from young brides-to-be whose fiances were killed to a middle-aged high-school teacher who lost her 23-year-old son to a pregnant mother of five who lost her husband. Their shared sense of loss transcends geographical, age or gender differences. They hold hands and hug each other throughout the morning, sharing tissues and tears and tales of the loved ones they lost.
Koch picks a new theme each week and more than 65 unpaid volunteers go to work bringing it to life. When the theme was heroism, the room was decked out with patriotic colors and balloons. Two posters at the front of the room listed the names of loved ones lost on September 11 as well as the support group members themselves.
Last week, during an all-female turnout, the theme was making lemonade from lemons. A panel of survivors who had lost siblings, fiances, husbands or parents at a young age shared their stories while volunteers handed out plastic champagne flutes filled with lemonade and placed daffodils and sunflowers into lemon-filled vases strewn around the room.
Amid sniffles and some sobs, they also passed out clear bags tied with bright bows that contained teddy bears custom made from the shirts of the men killed in the attacks. Terry Strada immediately pulled open the bag and clutched the beige-colored bear to her chest, softly stroking its head as tears slipped down her cheeks. A mother of three, her youngest son, Justin, was born four days before his father, Thomas, a bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, was killed. “Life will always be bittersweet,” she says, now that the man she shared three children and two decades of her life with is gone. “This grief process is 24/7. It doesn’t matter when I put my kids to bed, they end up in my bed or coming to get me.”
Susan Picarro, a mother of two, held a pin-striped bear made from a shirt she had found when she cleaned out her late husband Ludwig Picarro’s office at Zurich American Insurance Group in Liberty Plaza. His shirt, along with shelves of books, a leather carrying case, a father’s day card, and other items in his office survived the attacks. He had been across the street at the World Trade Center for a meeting with Aon Insurance on the morning of September 11.
For fiancees, the teddy bear gifts were particularly special. They are in a particularly tough spot since they are ineligible for federal funds, and they often don’t receive donations and discounts that have been specified for family members only.
“I look around every day now and think, I can’t believe this is my life. I went from the happiest time of my life to the unhappiest in one day,” says Dominique DeNardo, whose fiance was killed in the attacks. “This is the only place where I feel normal.”
“You have lost the same emotionally, but the stress of not being recognized makes it worse,” says Bengivenga, who had been with his fiancee for 11 years. They were within weeks of their wedding when she died. He was so inspired by Koch’s group that he has formed a separate support group specifically for fiances that has already attracted at least 20 members.
Koch hopes that other members will start meeting outside the group she runs as well, whether formally or informally–in part because her group will meet less frequently as time passes. Typically, support groups last just 10 sessions or so. “This time, I think we will go the whole year with them,” says Koch. “I asked if they wanted to take time off for Christmas or the New Year but they were all there. We are their lifeline. I know that what we’re doing is good.”
In 20 sessions, she says members have come far enough to begin looking ahead and mapping out a future. But as far as they’ve come, she knows they still have a long way to go. The constant coverage of the attacks and the updates on clean-up efforts at Ground Zero, the tributes and Twin Tower memorabilia, and the replaying of the horrific scenes as thousands of workers scrambled to get out of the buildings before they collapsed, make it difficult to put the event behind them. While the tributes and outpouring of donations have provided comfort, seeing the images again and again dredge up old memories and new tears. One member of the support group, who lost her son in the attack, says she hasn’t watched network television since September. When she finally went to a newsstand, she was so overcome by the headlines and graphic images on the magazine covers that she fainted.
Some of the women in the support group still cry at the mention of their husbands, and many still linger long after the weekly meeting is over, talking softly or playing with one of at least four new babies born since September 11. They share photographs of lost loved ones and information on financial aid and other resources. Sometimes they just sit quietly.
Though the group has grown so big it now fills the room, Koch still tries to hug and speak with every member individually. Until last week, few of them knew that she was suffering with her own issues. Koch is fighting breast cancer, a disease that was expected to have killed her by now. She doesn’t speak much about it–so far, she is winning the battle. But at last week’s meeting, she joined the panel of women who’d lost loved ones and shared her story.
Koch says her sister’s death from ovarian cancer at 33 compelled her to change careers and become a bereavement counselor. “I used all the enthusiasm I had for life and I put it into death,” she explains. “I thought: How can we make life out of death?”
She spent more than 13 years counseling families of victims of cancer and other life-threatening diseases, then she was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. As she went through treatment, she stopped working. For awhile, she thought she would never work again, and at times wondered if she would celebrate another birthday again.
“I came back for my children and my husband, but I never anticipated I would be coming back for you,” she said, surveying the semi-circle of women, many of who were crying. “You have given me my life.” They could say the same thing about her.
