Ten years and I still cannot watch TV about the World Trade Center. I lost some very good people on that day and I cry for them. As a lover of life, I will never understand WHY? I quess I am very lucky, I came close a few times, and the really question will always be if the time came, could I do the job I was trained to do knowing I would die trying?
Life has been good and some hands protected me, but WHY ME?
Jesus carried his cross for 33 years, I spent longer than that fighting fire and now, 17 years later, the embers of that time still causes me pain on a daily basis. Many of my childhood playmates, my school pals and five of the firefighter class of 1966 are gone and I remain.
I buried my parents, all of my uncles and aunts and my older brother and hundreds of my extended family of firefighters. I have faced cancer three times and beat that bastard three times and the question remains WHY?
The answer maybe that my life has been extended one day for each person I touched over the last 70 years. There is a growing list of people I pray for every night before I close my eyes, knowing some morning I will no longer have to face the morning light because I will have learned the answer to the question of WHY ME?
