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By David Ferrugio
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On Sept. 11, 2001, one version of myself died. And another version began on Sept. 12.
That day, I learned that the most important things in life can be taken in a blink of an eye, without my consent or a chance to negotiate.
It was a brutal lesson to learn as a young boy, yet the greatest one of my life.
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Ever since my father died in the World Trade Center, my grief has ebbed and flowed, even 25 years after the terror attacks that claimed his life.
I was in seventh grade, in first period, when my friend Jeff approached me. He came into school late, after the first tower was struck. He knew my dad worked in the World Trade Center and told me that a plane flew into the building.
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I went to the main office to call my mom, but they wouldn’t let me. We lived in a commuter town in New Jersey, and the school had a lot of students whose parents worked in the city; they couldn’t have a line of distraught kids trying to call home. My family kept me in school where I was safe while they were in survival mode, trying to figure out what had happened.
I vividly recall walking home and turning around the final bend to my house, where I saw a fleet of cars outside my home. That’s when I knew it was serious. Upon walking in, I forced myself toward the television.
When I saw the replays of the crashes, it felt like my heart exploded and my soul left my body. I burst into tears, and then everything went black. I’ve spent the rest of my life sorting out the rush my body felt that day.
My courageous mother was now a 44-year old widow. My sisters were now fatherless at 19 and 17 years old. And I, a late-blooming 12-year-old with no armpit hair, was clueless and frustrated, pushed into a world I didn't have the emotional vocabulary to explain. Same house, same loss, but four different griefs.
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I used to watch the footage of the first tower crash repeatedly. I questioned whether it was healthy, but something told me that I needed to feel. It made me transmute this ball of hurt inside into tears that perhaps weren't coming out otherwise. I would wish I was there that day next to my father. I wanted to put the pieces together to understand what my father experienced—answers I knew I probably wouldn’t find, but I wanted to try. I think that even as a young teenager, I knew that this was part of my healing process: I wanted to face the emotions that came out of me, to feel the pain and fear and anguish.
Retroactively, I came to believe watching the footage was a form of exposure therapy. Facing the most horrific day of my life and running toward the roar, I learned that I am still here. I'm still breathing.
Even to this day, a quarter century later, if I find a new angle that I’ve never seen before, I want to watch. Doing so allows me to return to that sadness, because that sadness represents my father and all my family has endured. I still try to absorb any new information about what happened that day to make up for everything my trauma response blocked out of my mind. I think seeing new footage and searching for new information is my attempt to fill in the blanks.
Accepting my grief and allowing myself to sit in it, instead of pushing it away, has helped me cope throughout the years—because the grief is always with me. It's like lightning striking a tree. The tree continues to grow around the damage, but inside there will always be a charred scar.
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The death of my father and the grief that followed, plus the partial guilt I felt for the attention I received, are part of what inspired my podcast, DEAD Talks. My dad’s death is part of history—because of that, I received a tremendous amount of support. But I couldn’t help thinking of all the people who have lost someone on a regular old Tuesday who don’t feel seen, like I did. That, plus learning the importance and value in expressing grief (instead of internalizing it) and being more vulnerable made me realize how little we speak about the common denominator that is death and loss.
I decided to share other people’s stories to normalize an experience that’s destined for us all. I believe in the importance of story and expression to learn from one another and to feel seen. I want to turn my experience into something meaningful that can help others. After all, death is the great equalizer—an equalizer that separates us but one that can also bind us.
I think of my dad all of the time. He's the reason for everything that I do, from how I try to be a good man, to the work I'm doing with my show to normalize the conversation around death, to offer some comfort to people I'll never meet.
Death and life are two sides of the same coin. And, because of my father dying, I now recognize the other side of it: the beauty.
David Ferrugio is the host and creator of the DEAD Talks podcast and author of You're Not Dead Yet: How Grief and Loss Can Teach You How to Live*.*
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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