The Houston Chronicle
September 08, 2002, Sunday 2 STAR EDITION
SECTION: LIFESTYLE; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 3172 words
HEADLINE: Our Changed Nation;
REMEMBERING SEPT. 11;
Grief is a strange emotion. It is a pain that bores down to our
souls when a
spouse or child or friend is yanked from our lives. It is a storm
of tears and
anger, a string on unanswered questions. It is what remains after
services, when
we are left to face the hole in our families.;
Love. Loss. Grief.
SOURCE: Staff
BYLINE: CLAUDIA FELDMAN
BODY:
WHEN Iva Dell DeStefano starts missing the son she
lost Sept. 11, she
confides in her friends, or she takes to her bed.
She was born in the country, and she says country
folks suffer their losses
and tend to their wounds more or less silently. She's not big
on counseling.
She's not big on grief groups.
"I didn't get this far by being a weakling," she
said.
Malti Shah is no weakling, either.
But when she thinks of her firstborn trapped in the
World Trade Center, she
can't stop crying. After her husband died, she divided her love
and attention
between her two sons. Now, she says, she feels cut in half.
The diminutive mother and grandmother was visiting
her son and his family in
New Jersey on Sept. 11. That morning she took a walk along the
Hudson River.
She stopped, then almost collapsed, when she saw
people staring across at the
Manhattan skyline and smoke billowing from the WTC.
Almost 3,000 people died that day and many more were
wounded in the most
violent series of attacks ever launched on American soil. A year
later, those
still on the injured list include surviving family members, close
friends and
the many Americans grieving and healing what has been called
a loss of
innocence.
It's bad enough to lose loved ones - those who balanced
the checkbook, who
reigned over family milestones - at the end of a natural life
span, says
psychologist Charles Figley, director of the Traumatology Institute
at Florida
State University. Losing those dear faces prematurely in a terrorist
plot - that
defies understanding.
"It's a double-edged whammy," Figley said. "It's
very hard to get your arms
around the idea that you'll never see your loved one again. Then
add to that
fact you will forever connect and be connected to this horrific
event."
Grieving after Sept. 11, then, means coming to terms
with the horror and
scope of loss. It's easier, perhaps, to write a dissertation
in Chinese or take
up professional opera.
"We make the assumption that one size fits all in
helping people grieve, but
really, the process is extraordinarly complicated," Figley said.
"Don't treat
them like they have a disease. Don't avoid them. Their loss reminds
us about the
fragility of life. Their loss could happen to us."
DeStefano, who lost Jimmy Nevill Storey, and Shah,
who lost Jayesh Shah, are
among those in southeast Texas mourning for members of their
nuclear families.
Others include Andres and Carmen Caballero, who lost their son,
Daniel; Toni
Lawrence, who lost her sister, Barbara Olson; and Kevin and Brigitte
Barry, who
lost his mother, Diane. Carlos Dos Santos lost his best friend,
Joseph Zuccala.
One elementary school child lost her mother, Michell Robotham.
For these survivors and others, it's been an awful
year.
"I just want to block out talk of Sept. 11, but I
can't, it's everywhere,"
DeStefano said. "I feel like I'm living it all over again."
Difficult work
When it comes to the work of grief and recovery,
there are so many truths:
Everyone grieves at different speeds. There is no right way.
Friends and loved
ones can help most by simply listening. It's not the time to
give advice.
Americans, not knowing what else to do, tend to rush
the grieving process, to
gulp it down like a fast-food hamburger.
Slow down, Figley advises.
Grief work is especially difficult when lives are
cut short unexpectedly -
when mothers, for example, are burying sons.
"The loss shatters assumptions about how life is
supposed to be," Figley
said. "Suddenly the world seems like a sad, risky and unpredictable
place."
Ten-year-old Nikita Shah, daughter of Jayesh, understands
those panicky
feelings. She wrote her father a letter on his memorial Web site.
"Dear Daddy. . . . I miss you coaching
me in soccer, baseball and swimming.
I miss you at dinner and when it will first snow. I wish you
were with us when
we went to see the Harry Potter movie. . . . "
Children grieve in small spurts, says Angela Caughlin,
director of programs
for a grief center for families and children called Bo's Place.
"They are more
physical in their grief. They may have a lot of restlessness
and anxiety and
start to act out."
Also, Caughlin says, children grieve differently
at different stages. Say a
child is 10 when she loses her dad. She will revisit the death
at different
stages of life and each time view the loss differently.
Adults feel the impact in a crushing blow but also
spiral in and out of
various stages, Caughlin says. "Grieving is not a neat thing.
It takes a long
time to adjust to life without that loved one. The most common
thing I hear is,
'Can we just stop talking about this? I just want it to be over.'
"
It's never over, Caughlin says, just easier with
time.
Niloy Shah, Jayesh's younger brother, is on the mend
but not recovered yet.
He and Jayesh were best friends. They attended the same grade
schools, the same
college, the same graduate school. When Jayesh and his wife were
moving from
Chicago to Houston, they lived with Niloy and his wife for seven
months.
The brothers shared a drive to succeed, a love of
sports, devotion to their
families, even the same broad smile. Niloy and his family hosted
the goodbye
party, complete with a Twin Towers cake, when Jayesh decided
to take a job in
New York as vice president of technology with a division of Cantor
Fitzgerald.
The two families visited back and forth. They inspected
the World Trade
Center with curiosity and fear. The building had been attacked
by terrorists
before, so there were safety questions.
Jayesh assured his brother, his mother, his sister-in-law,
Darshi, that
security was tight and the buildings were indestructible.
The morning of Sept. 11, Niloy called his brother
as usual and got no answer,
not even the recording. By midmorning Niloy was home from work,
pacing in front
of the television, trying desperately to get the family a flight
to New York.
Darshi will never forget the sight of the towers
crumbling as she sat glued
to the TV set. "The phones were ringing. Our friends were calling.
My dad called
and tried to comfort me. 'A lot of people have gotten out,' he
said. 'You don't
know.' But my gut feeling was utter devastation. The unimaginable
had just
occurred."
Within a few days, Niloy and Darshi were walking
the streets of New York,
searching for Jayesh. Their approach was bold, Darshi says. "It
was: 'We're
going to find him. We're going to bring him back.' "
As the days passed, their hopes dimmed.
One burly policeman stood on a street corner and
cried with them. Taxi
drivers wouldn't take their money. Strangers offered them plane
tickets and
food.
The Shahs couldn't accept those gifts, Darshi says,
and the well-intentioned
strangers couldn't lessen their pain. Nevertheless, they felt
less alone. Niloy
feels he found friends those miserable weeks in New York who
are like new
brothers and sisters.
Jayesh's office had been on the 103rd floor of One
World Trade Center. Niloy
and Darshi searched for news of anyone who had escaped from that
location. They
turned up nothing. Finally, Darshi shared her worst fears with
the family.
She didn't think Jayesh was ever coming home.
Jayesh's wife, Jyothi, said very little, but she
was angry. Why was her
family giving up hope?
The two women agreed to disagree.
On Sept. 22 the family held a prayer session in New
Jersey.
The next day, Niloy, Darshi and the children returned
to Houston. The kids
went back to school. Niloy went back to work as a planning manager
for the oil
company BP
"Mentally, I didn't know if I could ever function
at work again," Niloy said.
On Sept. 27, rescue workers found Jayesh's body.
On Sept. 30, the family regrouped in New Jersey for
the funeral.
A year later, Malti Shah says she will never be the
same. She will try to
show the world a smile, she says, but inside, she will be crying.
Every new day, she says, is harder than the last.
Niloy still frets that he didn't get to tell his
brother goodbye. Then he
comforts himself.
"That is just a formality. It's more important that
we did everything
together that two brothers could possibly do."
Niloy is doing his grief work.
"I have to focus on the time we had together rather
than what we don't have
anymore," he said. "And, I have a digital tape recorder, and
I still talk to
him. And, I see my brother in his kids. That's a warming feeling.
If Jayesh were
still alive, the kids would be in New York. But they're here,
and they fill a
void."
Darshi glances sorrowfully at a family photo taken
a few years ago. It will
be a long time, maybe years, before they attempt another group
shot.
"We just can't," she says. "Our family is kind of
broken, and I can't fathom
how to make us complete."
Facing their pain
The goal for the bereaved, when it's all said and
done, is recovery.
Figley is an academician, a researcher, but he also
tries to help survivors
move through the grieving process. They need to deal with five
questions, he
says.
"What happened?
"Why did it happen to him or her, and what could
I have done to prevent it?
"Why did I behave the way I did when I first learned
of the death, or why did
I behave the way I did the last time I saw him or her?
"Why am I acting and feeling this way since I've
been informed of the death?
"What if I lose someone else? Will I be able to cope?"
The questions will continue to haunt, Figley says,
until they are adequately
answered.
Kay Bergen, bereavement coordinator for the Houston
Hospice, says mourners
have four tasks: Face the reality of the death, experience and
acknowledge the
pain, adjust to the environment in which the loved one is missing
and, finally,
realize that the person is not a part of everyday living and
breathing, relegate
him or her to the memory bank and move on with life.
In that final stage, Bergen says, "there will be
a sense of sadness when you
think about that person, but it won't have the same wrenching
quality."
Caughlin, with Bo's Place, asks clients to consider
what is lost, what is
left and what is possible. The process, she says, takes a year
or more.
Kevin and Brigitte Barry know they still have grief
work to do. When he met
her in New York 12 years ago, he introduced her almost immediately
to his
mother, Diane.
On one of their early dates, they went to see an
off-Broadway show, The
Fantasticks. It was Diane's idea and Diane's treat.
When it came time to buy the engagement ring, Diane
paid.
"I paid her back," Kevin said sheepishly. "But it
was right after college. I
was still poor."
Today Kevin doesn't say much about the anger, frustration
and enormous loss
he felt when his mother died in the World Trade Center.
Brigitte is more vocal. It's important, she says,
that Americans remember the
woman they lost.
Diane, the oldest of eight children, spent her childhood
in New Jersey. Fond
childhood memories were baking potatoes over open fires and playing
for hours at
the local swimming hole.
She grew up, married and raised three children on
Staten Island. Mondays
through Fridays she did clerical work on a nearby naval base.
Every Sunday she
taught first-graders at the Holy Rosary School of Religion.
When Diane was laid off in the mid-'90s, she was
distraught; she thought she
was too old to find another job. But a family friend helped her
find a position
as an administrative assistant at Aon Corp., with offices in
the World Trade
Center.
When Diane started at Aon, she had no computer skills.
But her bosses were
willing to send her to training.
"They liked her," Brigitte said. "They liked who
she was."
She was efficient and organized and pleasant to everybody.
She came to work
early and left on time and managed to say what she thought diplomatically.
When she offered advice, people took it.
"She was a sage," Kevin said.
In April 2001, Diane and Ed, her husband of 35 years,
made her last trip to
Houston. They came to celebrate their eldest grandchild's birthday.
Preston was
4.
A fantastic visit, Brigitte says. The weather was
cool, the two grandkids
were warm and affectionate, and Diane, who suffered from cellulitis,
wasn't in
pain.
"I'm glad I took all those pictures," Brigitte said.
In July 2001, Diane celebrat-ed her 60th birthday
at Windows on the World,
the restaurant atop the World Trade Center.
Wasn't she afraid to work in a building that had
once been targeted by
terrorists, her sister and aunt asked Diane at lunch.
Diane answered them confidently: "No, really not.
I'm ready to meet my Lord."
On Sept. 11, Brigitte and Kevin hit the snooze button
a few times too many,
so they were late, rushing to dress the kids and get to nursery
school and work
when the phone rang. It was Kevin's dad.
"Turn on the TV," he said. "The World Trade Center
is hit."
They snapped on the tube in time to see a second
plane loaded with passengers
and fuel ram Two World Trade Center, the south tower.
Diane was on the 93rd floor of the south tower, probably
drinking coffee with
co-workers.
No one can know what her last minutes were like.
Brigitte believes she stayed
close to her friends, followed instructions and remained calm.
Diane's body was never found. What was recovered
was her driver's license, in
perfect shape, and a receipt for a Christmas gift she had bought
Kevin and
Brigitte years earlier.
As much as the Barrys are missing Diane, they know
Kevin's dad and older
sister, Maureen, are having an even harder time.
"Ed just doesn't know what to do," Brigitte says.
"He said the hardest part
is waiting at 6:30 or 7 every evening for Diane to come through
the front door."
Ed has other difficulties, too. With Diane gone,
the responsibility of caring
for Maureen falls to him. She was born with a host of medical
problems and has
lived in an institution most of her adult life. Until her death,
Diane spent the
bulk of every Sunday with Maureen.
Last Thanksgiving, Ed and Maureen flew to Houston
to spend time with Kevin
and Brigitte and the boys.
Brigitte remembers Maureen asking her, "Will you
be my mom now?"
In the past year, Kevin has tried to learn everything
he can about the
terrorists who killed his mother. Also, he's spent more time
in church with
Brigitte, who has been doing Sunday morning readings just like
Diane loved to
do. And he's set up a little memorial, dedicated to the Twin
Towers and his mom,
on a living room bookshelf.
"I'm a New Yorker," Kevin told Brigitte. "When the
Twin Towers fell, a part
of me fell, too."
Saving memories
It's been a year and the pain keeps coming.
Carlos Dos Santos, a regional training manager for
Whataburger, lost his best
friend, New York banker Joseph Zuccala, in the World Trade Center.
A few months ago, Santos wrote a tribute on his buddy's
memorial Web site.
"Just in case you think that I've stopped thinking
about you, you're wrong.
I'm indebted to you for 37 years of true friendship, so one year
can't erase
that. . . .
"I think of the coming years that we were supposed
to share as two sensible
yet wacky guys and wonder how I'm supposed to do this by myself!?"
Zuccala left behind a wife and two daughters. Since
Sept. 11, Dos Santos has
been writing them letters about the young man he loved like a
brother and the
solid citizen who was such a proud dad.
Zuccala used to say that he wanted Dos Santos to
be an important part of the
wedding parties when his girls decided to get married.
Dos Santos doesn't have children, and Zuccala wanted
his friend to know the
feeling, to have the chance to walk in his shoes.
Zuccala didn't dream he would need a substitute to
walk them down the aisle.
Debbie Rand lost her cousin, Donald Greene, on the
United Airlines flight
that crashed in Pennsylvania. They weren't in regular contact,
yet his death has
left her shaken like a leaf in a storm.
She lists just a few of the details associated with
his death:
He was on his way from his home in Connecticut to
meet three of his brothers
in California for a weeklong hiking trip.
He was a highly skilled pilot, and Rand feels certain
he died trying to fight
his way to the cockpit to take control.
Rand didn't realize Greene was on Flight 93 until
she got an e-mail from a
relative. "Tomorrow is your cousin's service," the note read,
though by the time
Rand saw it, the service was already in progress. When she called
for more
information, she got a caterer.
Rand says her faith in humankind is shaken. "How
could these people do what
they did?" she asked. "Are they done with us? I'm waiting for
the other shoe to
drop."
She also says she feels more upset now than she did
a year ago. "The shock
and disbelief has worn off. Now emotions are closer to the surface."
In Bryan, Iva Dell DeStefano settles back in her
recliner to talk about her
firstborn son.
"I'm biased," she said.
Jimmy Nevill Storey loved his wife; he loved his
children; he loved his
grandchildren; he felt lucky to have all of them, DeStefano says.
And he loved her. He called almost every day.
She leaned on him, DeStefano said. "Maybe too much."
Storey, senior vice president of Marsh & McLennan
Cos., was based in Houston,
but he traveled frequently to New York and the World Trade Center
for business.
That's where he was on Sept. 11.
DeStefano wasn't listening to the news that morning.
Her first inkling of
trouble came from Tim, the adult son who lives with her. He left
for work, then
came right back home. Then her middle child, Kaye, called from
Salem, Ore.
"I have very caring children," De Stefano said. "At
first I didn't think the
worst. Then I just gave up."
Tracey Storey, Jimmy's daughter, rushed from New
Jersey to New York to try to
find her dad. She asked Marsh & McLennan to provide her an
office, a fax machine
and a phone. She was able to recover little, however, besides
the personal items
in his hotel room.
The memorial was Sept. 22 in Katy. DeStefano remembers
the church was
overflowing with friends and family.
"It was very, very touching, but I was just in a
fog," she said. "I've been
under a black cloud this whole year."
Once, to help her recover from another death, she
tried grief counseling at
her church. "We just sat around and talked about our problems
like old people
talking about their ailments. I didn't dislike it, but I'm not
sure how much it
helped."
Some Texans will be traveling to New York for memorial
services, but
DeStefano will not be among them.
"I've never been to New York," she said stiffly.
"I don't think I'd like it."
Sadness and hope
Friends ask Bergen and Caughlin how they can bear
to work in such sad places.
They don't work in sad places, they say.
Caughlin explained: "When people come in, they're
very sad. But it's so
encouraging to watch families heal, to see them come back from
a tragedy and
move on."
So it will be in time, the grief experts say, with
Sept. 11.
DeStefano hopes she will stop feeling so sad one
day. She's bounced back
before. Over the years, she's buried two husbands, six brothers
and a sister.
"What else do you do?" she asked. "You just don't
lie down and die."
GRAPHIC: Drawing: 1. ( color ); Photos: 2. Niloy Shoh's and his mother's,
Malti
Shah, lives were changed in an instant when their brother and
son Jayesh Shah
was killed at the World Trade Center. ( p.4 ); 3. Kevin and Brigitte
Barry keep
a memorial to Diane Berry at their home in the Woodlands. ( p.4
); 4. Dos
Santos, right, loved Zuccala like a brother. ( p.4 ); 5. Carlos
Dos Santos holds
onto memories of his best friend, Joseph Zuccala, neatly filed
in a manilla
folder. ( p.4 ); Mugs: 6. Michell Robotham ( p.4 ); 7. Jayesh
Shah ( p.4 ); 8.
Donald Greene ( p.4 ); 9. Diane Barry ( p.4 ); 10. Jimmy Nevill
Storey ( p.4 );
11. Daniel Caballero ( p.4 ); 1. Frances Theil illustration and
design /
Chronicle; 2. Kevin Fujii / Chronicle; 3. Melissa Phillip / Chronicle;
4. - 5.
Karen Warren / Chronicle
TYPE: Series
LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2002