BRICK, NJ — There's a photograph Loisanne Diehl keeps and shares frequently, one that's a reminder of some of the best times of her life.
In it, her husband, Michael, is posing with their son, Jason, and daughter, Jennifer, with a snowman they built in front of their Brick Township home, all three smiling proudly at their handiwork.
"That was our dream house," Loisanne said. The couple had purchased a piece of property on a dead-end street near Veterans Memorial Middle School and built the home, just how they wanted it. It was the place she and Michael would spend Sunday afternoons, sitting on the sprawling deck.
"Sunday afternoons were our downtime," she said. "We would sit on the back deck with a cocktail and just relax."
They had been living in the home for eight years and were coming up on their 24th anniversary when Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything.
Michael was a vice president with Fiduciary Trust International and in his office on the 92nd floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower.
Loisanne was getting ready for work at the time. A relative called her about the first plane. She turned on the television just seconds before United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower at the 78th floor.
Michael didn't make it out alive.
She had been to hell and back already by then, losing two infant daughters, in 1984 and 1985, when they were born prematurely.
Still, nothing prepared her for losing Michael.
"I was a single mother out of nowhere," she said. Jennifer was 15 and Jason was 19 at the time, but "after Michael was killed it left a big gap."
"It's hard enough to lose your spouse," Loisanne said. "To have your husband murdered and come home in pieces? It's devastating."
For Loisanne, acceptance that her husband, the love of her life, was gone, came quickly. Her first priority was helping their children.
Jennifer was a student at Brick Memorial High School at the time. Jason was at Caldwell University. Both saw the second plane hit the tower where their father worked.
Jennifer stayed at school until dismissal, and when she arrived home, there were police cars parked in front of the house, Loisanne said.
She spoke to Jason on the phone and told him to stay put at college. "I didn't want him driving home in that state," she said; instead, his girlfriend drove up to Caldwell and drove him home.
In the meantime, Loisanne started receiving phone calls. Co-workers of Michael's. Friends. A client from Switzerland. And family, who acknowledged the painful fact that the couple was six days shy of their 24th wedding anniversary.
"By the end of the day we figured most of the people were dead," she said.
It was more than two months before they received physical confirmation that Michael was indeed gone, and were able to hold what turned out to be the first of two funerals for him.
"The night before Thanksgiving they found Michael's right hand," Loisanne said. When the police called, all they could tell her is they had found him; they told her she had to call the coroner's office for details on what had been found.
A few months later they found Michael's torso, she said. She had purchased a crypt at the cemetery and had put his hand in a small container in it. When his torso was found, it and his hand were put in together, Loisanne said.
The crypt is in the cemetery around the corner from where their infant daughters are buried, she said.
"The only other thing I got back was his admission card," she said, the key card he would swipe to get into the building. "It wasn't burned or singed or anything."
The first two years after Michael's death were consumed by paperwork and working and trying to help the kids. She and Jennifer took advantage of free counseling sessions that were offered by the federal government to 9/11 survivors and family members.
But as things started to calm down, the depression increased. Loisanne sold the home that had been the source of so many happy memories, including celebrations of promotions that Michael announced by surprising her with a bottle of champagne.
"He was due for a promotion two weeks after (the 9/11 attacks) to senior vice president," she said. Michael's boss told her in the days after his death. "He had picked out the people who were going to work for him."
They would have celebrated with the champagne on the back deck, as they done other times.
By the end of 2003 she had sold the house.
"I couldn't live there anymore," she said. "The dream was gone."
Loisanne had been dealing with depression since she was a teenager, and was first diagnosed when she was about 25 years old. Michael's death, however, worsened it dramatically.
She is far from alone, according to Hackensack Meridian Health officials. More than 19,000 certified members of the World Trade Center Health Program are currently being treated for mental health disorders including major depressive disorder, PTSD, anxiety disorder and panic disorder, they said. It's estimated up to 70,000 adults experienced PTSD following the attacks.
Loisanne sought treatment and support. There were speaking engagements related to 9/11, including speaking to Congress in Washington in the aftermath that helped her keep busy for a while, but Loisanne said she didn't find a bond with other victims' families.
"They had younger children, so there wasn't a lot in common," Loisanne said.
As the depression worsened, she checked herself into the hospital to deal with thoughts of harming herself. At one point she moved in with her daughter for 18 months, and simply stayed in the house.
"I couldn't face anybody," she said.
Meanwhile the doctors were trying a multitude of medications to try to get a handle on her major depression.
Finally, four years ago, after her third hospitalization because of her concerns about suicidal thoughts, she met Dr. Nitin Pothen, a mental health expert at Hackensack Meridian Ocean University Medical Center. She also got a new diagnosis: treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.
Pothen recommended she try a new medication, Sprovato, a nasal spray that delivers a ketamine derivative that acts on different receptors to help relieve the depressive symptoms.
She was willing to try it, even though a nasal spray sounded strange, but she had to be approved for the treatment.
"I had to get my records for more than 10 years from Walgreens" of the various medications she'd been prescribed and had tried — nearly 60 in all. When she walked in with the folder and said, "Here's the 10 years' worth of medicines I've been taking," it convinced the psychiatrists quickly that she was a candidate for the Sprovato.
She started it soon afterward, at first receiving it twice a week, and then slowly weaned off it. She stayed off it for a year before she could feel the depression starting to increase again, and went back on it for six months.
"It's been a lifesaver," Loisanne said. "I don't know where I would be without it."
The treatment took some getting used to — it's administered in three rounds of spray in the nasal cavities and then she has to wait for an hour before she's allowed to leave, and she must be driven home, she said. It also can cause a sensation of an out-of-body experience, she said.
It's been worth it, Loisanne said. Since starting the treatment she has resumed the activities that bring her joy and is no longer hiding.
She moved back into her own home in the Four Seasons in Lakewood and is participating in clubs there and is traveling now, including a trip to Iceland with friends.
Loisanne said she has not shied away from the ceremonies marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, but her participation has changed.
In the early years, she went to New York City to the memorial service at the site of the Twin Towers. She read names, including Michael's, and read a Bible verse.
She's stopped going to the World Trade Center site in more recent years, however.
"I was going every year," Loisanne said, "but to me what the World Trade Center represents today is a tourist attraction. I see people getting off the tour buses with their cameras, sitting their kids on the fountains to take pictures."
"It's not as sacred as it should be," she said. She compared the World Trade Center memorial site to the memorial in Oklahoma City at the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. That bombing, the result of a homegrown terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh, killed 168 adults and children. The memorial includes a field of empty chairs — larger ones for adults, smaller ones for children — representing those who were killed.
Now she usually attends the ceremony in Brick Township at Windward Beach Park on Princeton Avenue, where Michael and seven others from Brick are remembered — both through their names being spoken during the ceremony, and permanently on the base of the Angel in Anguish monument that commemorates the attacks.
Brick's ceremony is at 6 p.m. Friday: 25th Anniversary 9/11 Commemoration Set In Brick
Loisanne said the one thing she has learned through all of this is how very strong she is, and she is grateful to the Pothen for helping her find a path to keep moving forward.
"My favorite song is 'I'm Still Standing' by Elton John," she said. "Because after everything, I am still standing."
"You can't give up," she said.
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