My Prayers For Healing, As I Remember My Mom, And Other 9/11 Cancer Victims, This 25th Anniversary

LONG ISLAND, NY — Looking back on the World Trade Center, where my mother worked for years, I recall it always made me uneasy. I always felt like I couldn't stay there long. I rejected, I don't know how many offers from my mother to eat at Windows on the World. Even when I had to take the subway there to go to my job at South Street Seaport, I couldn't wait to get out of there. The place, for some reason, made me crawl out of my skin.

The building swayed when it was windy, and the elevators were like an amusement park ride gone wrong. I can still hear it, and if I close my eyes, I can imagine the rush of wind and unsteady feeling of being suspended in the air so high up. The company my mother worked for was based there in the 90s until the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. My mother, Alice June Hoey, a paralegal, worked on the 39th floor, and was able to escape safely with her coworkers that day. Later, her office moved to Brooklyn Heights, then back to lower Manhattan at Battery Park.

I remember a lot from the summer of 2001, but really only in snapshots in my mind, little snippets here and there.

I had just graduated J-School, something that took me nearly nine years to do — from start to finish — for one reason or another. I had just wanted to finish and get it over with, but I was not entirely sold on what I wanted to do with my life. News seemed to be a long, hard slog, and at the end of the day was one of those thankless jobs, kind of like waiting tables, but without tips.

Having a lifelong love of film and great movies, I decided to dabble in screenwriting, and took a course at Hunter College where I ended up getting an internship as a production assistant on an independent film called “The Lucky Ones.”

Ironically, the plot centered around a disillusioned newsman. It starred Ivan Martin, who later became famous for the “Can you hear me now?” cellphone commercial, but it also had some supporting roles for Dallas Roberts and Dirk Benedict of Battlestar Galactica, not to mention cameos by Jaid Barrymore and Francis Ford Coppola. When the production was short of extras, I was wrangled into makeup and hair, but got to keep my super cool glitter iron-on Super Girl T-shirt.

Unfortunately, I had to dance in a club scene along with others to James Brown’s “Get on up” on and off for about seven hours. To this day, it’s a tune that once heard, plays over in my head for the same amount of time. I think that even if I played Mmmbop by Hanson three times, I still would not be able to get rid of the tune. I’ve never tried, though.

Despite occasional problems with that song, I can say that I pretty much had just about one of the best summers of my life that started with my birthday party at Club Exit. I thought I was really cool when I had a shout-out from the deejay and got to dance with my best friend under falling snow to the techno version of “Now we are free” from the Gladiator soundtrack.

Okay, so you had to be there nerding with us to enjoy it.

From there, the summer was filled with dates, parties, bars, and of course, plenty of drinking and maybe some more partying, shopping, and eating.

I was making a decent living and had paid off a pile of medical and dental bills while working in midtown Manhattan, near Bryant Park as an executive assistant. There was always something to do, eat, or go to in the area, and it was an exciting time for me. Hell, you could even sit out on a bench, and it was non-stop entertainment for free.

I remember that one week before Sept. 11, I had taken vacation, and unbeknownst to my employer, I was finishing up my internship.

I attended the wrap party, which was at Veruka. Afterward, the party drifted over to a high-rise apartment overlooking the village. One of the producers who had spoken to me about my writing and my wish to pursue a career in the film industry saw me staring out over the city, and remarked something to the effect of seeing a night like that meant that I was on my way to making it and only good things can come. Something like that, anyway.

I remember that the night before my vacation ended, I went to a barbecue in Brooklyn and then headed back to Manhattan to see “The Others” with Nicole Kidman and Fionnula Flanagan at the movie theater right next to the World Trade Center.

When it was over in the early morning, myself and my boyfriend at the time, decided to leave from a side exit, and when we got down to street level, there was a caravan of rats making their way past us like we weren’t even there. From the alleyway, they were jumping into the water, and we could see them swimming away toward New Jersey.

Of course, we had just seen a creepy movie, so we couldn't help but wonder if rats maybe sensed something was going to happen.

Miraculously, my mother was not in lower Manhattan where she worked on 9/11. As for me, I don’t know whether I didn’t have clean clothes or what, but for some reason I ditched my normally all black — let’s be honest — mostly, synthetic clothes and heels for cool, loose-fitting khakis and a tank top covered with a blouse, and Converse sneakers. I also didn’t have my camera with me, but for once my cell phone was charged.

My train was held over for a period of time in the tunnel, and when I disembarked, I ran into my coworker who was also held over, though he was coming from the opposite direction.

As we turned the corner, a shadow sank down on us from overhead, and we thought it was one of the resident hawks who regularly made an appearance near the park.

I guess we will never know.

We had just about settled in to our desks when we started hearing sirens coming from every direction. It was one of those situations where if you had already experienced those sounds once — New York, or elsewhere — you know the second time around that something bad happened.

It’s an undeniable feeling in your gut that people are dead.

My boss was monitoring the news and announced a plane had hit one of the twin towers. I remember standing in his office as the footage showed the second plane hitting. By that time, we realized it was no accident. It was apparent that it was an attack. I remember my boss calling a photographer to alert him that he had a published photo with a tiny person waving for help. It was heartbreaking because the towers had already fallen.

How cool were we all then? Not so cool. No one in New York was, except for maybe the first responders. We lost big time that day. And the best thing is, it wasn’t even our fault. We didn’t know we were in a game. Everyone was just living their life.

That day, as I walked from Bryant Park to the 59th Street Bridge, I couldn't fathom how thousands of people were just obliterated in the blink of an eye. It felt like a disaster movie. The bars were spilled over into the streets with people glued to the television sets. As I made my way to Queens Mall, I was pushed down by a man having an anxiety attack, for lack of better words, and I was cut. I wasn't moving fast enough for him. Before I was trampled, a doctor from Queens and his wife picked me up and helped me.

We were like the rats in the water, all leaving Manhattan on our way to somewhere else.

As hundreds of us got off the bridge, volunteers were handing out water; some were praying. Some were in tears. I met my boyfriend and his brother-in/law at Queens Mall in Rego Park, they drove me back to Nassau County to my family's house.

One week after 9/11, my cousin was killed in Kuwait, and my dad had to fly out to Texas to help his brother identify the body. Two weeks after that, the British investors funding the company I worked for bailed.

It was a difficult time. So many families were suffering from losing loved ones. Every fire department in my surrounding neighborhood had purple and black funeral bunting up for months. It seemed as though I would run into at least three funerals some days just doing errands. I knew people who died or were affected by the loss: a college buddy's dad, an old friend's husband, an even older friend's brother, my pharmacist's wife, and a woman I waited on at the local diner.

New York was transformed, and the city, itself was never the same for me again. The heightened security reminded me of the north of Ireland, a place where the vibe can change at the drop of a hat. But in that time after 9/11, I realized my true calling. And, I believed my family to be safe from it.

But we weren’t. My mother was subject to the “toxic” air, as she referred to it, in lower Manhattan. She would often complain about the change in the air quality from it once being fresh, as it was on the water, to becoming heavy and foul. She would never let my brother and I linger in her office very long because she didn't feel it was cleaned properly after the attacks, and she wanted to reduce our exposure.

In the months after the attacks, she developed a persistent cough. She tried putting it off as the effect of allergens, but less than a year later, upon my insistence, she let my ENT check her out. It ended up being thyroid cancer that was treated successfully with a thyroidectomy and medication.

Like the evil that claimed the thousands in the terror attacks, something insidious had rooted itself in our life. It was 20 years before it reappeared.

I made sure that my mother stayed safe during the Covid-19 pandemic due to her high blood pressure and compromised immune system. I noticed a change in her in the summer of 2020. While she remained Covid-19-free, I did notice changes in her health and demeanor. She began to avoid acidic foods out of the blue, and her energy levels dulled down. I recall her getting sick during Thanksgiving dinner and blaming it on food poisoning, however, no one else had gotten ill that night. I questioned whether it was the food or something else as her habits had begun to change.

My mother gradually slowed down over the next few months, until February 2021, when I knew something was incredibly wrong. She was no longer eating and spent much of the day in bed sleeping.

I, again, convinced her to get checked out, and after a series of tests she was admitted to Stony Brook University Hospital and diagnosed with a strange form of cancer that the doctors there really could not explain. She started treatment and did very well. As her sole caretaker, I started to believe by summer she would live the full five years that was estimated. She was doing great.

Then, her maintenance chemo stopped working. I knew something was wrong when she gifted me my grandmother’s engagement ring at Christmas.

Her cancer was back, and the new chemotherapy treatment was intolerable for her. From there, her treatment evolved into palliative care. After a stay in the hospital with opiate-related complications, she contracted Covid-19 in a nursing facility that struggled to adhere to masking and quarantining.

I had her transferred back to the hospital where she was placed in quarantine for five days. Over that week, our conversations grew shorter, and that Saturday, her doctor called me to ask me to sign papers to have her placed on in-house hospice, pending a move to Good Shepherd Hospice nearby.

Once my mother was on hospice, the quarantine was lifted out of compassion, and I was allowed to see her. But it was in a sealed-off room, and I had to wear scrubs and a mask.

I couldn’t touch her hands until I was in the ambulance bringing her to the hospice. The next day, I was told she was transitioning, so I had the nurse place the phone next to her ear, and I asked her to wait for me. I was on my way out the door when I got the call that she was gone.

Watching my mother’s illness play out as it did, where she transformed from a vibrant woman, slowly diminishing, into a lifeless shell, was a living nightmare. Now, four years later, it feels just like a movie reel in my head. I can still see myself standing in her hospice room wearing scrubs, calling the funeral home to make arrangements, and wondering how the scenario could be real.

Thoughts of it haunt me, just like 9/11.

After the World Trade Center bombing, she was featured in a news broadcast in Ohio where the company she worked for was based. She explained how the explosion was so loud, that as she was making her way down the stairs to safety, she imagined there was a “pile of bodies” on the ground floor.

I can only think her words were prophetic.

The pile of bodies didn’t come until eight years later. And an estimated 9,000, including that of beloved mother’s, have joined the 2,799 killed in the attacks over the last 25 years from 9-11-related illnesses.

My heart goes out to all of the first responders, and other workers, in lower Manhattan from the 9/11 era. First responders, some of whom were in their 20s in 2001, are now suffering from the toxic exposure of the rubble, not to mention from lingering mental health issues.

Other workers, from construction sites and offices, like my mother, had regular jobs they held down to support their families and maybe have some extra cash to eat out over the weekend. No one ever expected to be dealing with illness 20 years later.

Some didn't have a choice because that was their job.

I pray these other bodies stop piling up. It might not be long enough that we can never forget, but it is long enough that we should be healed.