I’ve been imagining the 10^th anniversary as marking a big change, in the manner of the event itself: a cleaver that again sunders my life into before and after. Ten years after the attack that took my husband and left me an involuntary member of a group of grieving relatives, I've quit 9/11.

Not that simple.

In 2005, I began to pull away from the roles that had given me purpose after my husband was killed. Activism is healing, never more so than when a person feels her life to be literally halved (we were two; now I’m one). I felt I might be making a difference, and I drew comfort from people who seemed to understand both my deep pain and my desire to work.

I was spent, though: tired of attempting to express opinions on behalf of others; tired of steering clear of opinions I wanted to express; sick of being treated differently, as if I were a victim or a moral beacon or, god forbid, an opportunist: a symbol of resilience; a receptacle for a nation’s fear, anger, resentment and confusion; someone forever defined by one unexpected, violent, and oh so public event. I didn’t want to represent 9/11 families; I didn’t want to be known as a 9/11 widow.

I stayed professionally connected (the profession being “9/11 family adviser”), advising and consulting on various projects, writing a couple of op-eds and a book based on my experiences as a family member, but with the goal of making a larger point about the danger of moral authority in America. But I found I didn't have anything to say to reporters who still called me for quotes, sent by their editors and producers to find out what "we families" might think about every 9/11-related event  imaginable. 

Last May, Osama bin Laden’s death prompted a new round of calls and requests for interviews. I was invited as part of a group of family members to meet with the President of the United States at ground zero. I jumped at the chance and yes, meeting Barack Obama was thrilling. But that day--the crowds and the checkpoints, the heightened security, the helicopters droning overhead, the microphones and megaphones and construction cranes that hung like vultures over a still-incomplete site where my husband worked and died, even the identification badges bearing my name along with the words “family member” which, when held aloft, granted us access, a wave-through by jack-booted and helmeted police with weapons and walkie-talkies—dumped me unceremoniously back to 2001: a jumble of sights and sounds, exhaustion and exhilaration, highs and lows made up of fear, pride, confusion, and the sense of being different or “special” on account of a loss so severe we hadn’t even had time to process it. I came home  and cried like I hadn't for years.

Maybe that was a turning point or maybe, this time around, there is no precise before and after. 9/11’s hold on me is a little more complicated than I anticipated and I must respect my memory’s tenacity. So I’ve developed a plan: I’m staying away from commemorations, both those in New York and those locally. I won’t be heading into lower Manhattan, not even (for now) to the memorial to try to locate my late husband’s name on the lists of the dead.  No op-eds about 9/11 and how it changed America (did it?) or interviews about what I plan to do or what this milestone means to me.  Have I quit 9/11? Perhaps; perhaps not.  But I know this: for the first time in years, I'm looking forward to autumn.