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September 26, 2001

Andy and I went to Borders to read the news magazines on Monday following the terrorist attacks. I sat at a table in the cafe with a little stack of magazines and started with U.S. News & World Reports. I only made it about halfway through before I ditched my pile and wandered through the store, tears blurring my vision, trying to find my husband. He was sitting in a big comfy chair over near the art books.

"We have to go," I whispered.

"OK," he said. "Just a second."

"No." I told him with such force he took a closer look at me. "We have to go now."

He didn't argue, and I held back my sobs until we reached the car.

I'd been reading an article about some of the victims, and I got to the story of Floyd Rasmussen. It seems that he and his wife, Rhonda, both worked at the Pentagon, two floors apart. After the plane crashed into the building, Floyd wandered the building looking for his wife. The article said that he stumbled around the Pentagon for hours after the attack, calling to his missing wife, "Here I am. Come find me."

She was never found.

The horror of the attack, the magnitute of the loss of life, the overwhelming sadness of it all, suddenly weighed down on me with those six words.

Here I am. Come find me.

What if that were Andy? How on earth would I go on living knowing that he was crushed under a building? Where would the joy be in raising our daughter without him there with us? I tried to explain this sadness to him, and instead of reassuring me that it wouldn't ever happen, he just squeezed my hand as he drove us home and said, "I know. I know."

Because somebody's Andy was killed that day. Each of the people who died on September 11 belonged to someone. Thousands upon thousands of people are feeling the sharp, stabbing pain of loss that I can only imagine as they mourn the death of their loved ones.

So many people. So much sadness. How are we supposed to carry all of this sadness? Where is it supposed to go? If I think about it too much, it makes me sick. If I think about it in terms of numbers, I'm almost OK. 7,000 people are dead. That number leaves me numb, horrified.

But thinking about Floyd Rasmussen, looking for his wife...

Here I am. Come find me.

That's almost unbearable.