Volume 09 - Number 4 - March 2003
Pages: 157 - 210
Stearns, C. (2003). A fireman’s wife: How 9/11 changed my feelings. Clio’s Psyche, 9(4), 164-165.
A Fireman’s Wife: How 9/11 Changed My Feelings
Abstract
In this article, the author, the wife of a career firefighter, recounts from her own experience how the September 11, 2001 attacks changed her feelings about her husband’s work. She describes years of resentment at the overnight recall pager, at attending social events alone, and at the bond he shared with other firefighters, which she felt she could not join, and she describes resenting herself for feeling this way. She reports that after September 11, when he worked at Ground Zero and attended many funerals for firefighters who died, he became serious and somber, slept badly, stayed silent about the day, and refused counseling. She observes him beginning to question his own mortality. She recounts that when he finally spoke about what he had experienced, he chose to tell her rather than a counselor or his colleagues, and that this moved her. She maintains that the marriage was already good and that the change was in herself. Watching his conduct that week and afterward, she says, led her to understand why his dedication to the job matters to him, and she came to weigh his peace of mind above her resentment. She concludes that she still dislikes the pager and still worries, and she closes by reaffirming what she says to him before each shift: that his wife is waiting at home.
9/11 terrorist attack, anxiety, domestic terrorism, firefighter, marital relationship, psychobiography, psychohistory
It’s three a.m. and I am sleeping well in my bed when, all of a sudden, a loud, squelching noise starts pulsating through my bedroom. “Fire department announcing a rehire for one truck company, a rehire for one truck company, zero three hundred hours.” I squeeze my eyes shut and hope he has
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not heard it. Then his voice, “Steams here, yeah I’m in. ETA ten minutes.” After a few minutes of scrambling sounds, a familiar cheek is on mine. “Gotta go to work, hon. I’ll be back.”
That’s how it has always been in our home. That is, every time that something is burning in the towns that my husband, Dan, serves as a fireman. God, I have hated that perturbing noise, and the way it beckons him like one of those sirens you read about in Greek mythology. I guess my word would be resent. I resented that noise and its outcome: I would be left alone in our bed in the middle of the night so that the man I married—the one who promised to be there for me—could go and risk his life for strangers.
I resented that I had to go to endless social events without him and the number of times I had to say, “He’s at work.” I could not stand the thought that my husband shared a bond with other human beings, one that always competed with ours, one that I could never be a part of. The fact that others could see Dan as this amazing, selfless human being, while I felt betrayed every time he picked “them” over me, ate my heart out all the time. Most of all, I resented myself for not being able to see those things.
Then I lost something of my husband on September 11, 2001. I lost the man who was spirited, bouncing out of bed at night to answer recalls, talking incessantly about his job. His love for it was still there, but he was different about it: serious, somber. He went to Ground Zero that day, and for the two days that followed, experiencing something that for three months he kept bottled inside. September 11 and its aftermath brought intense suffering for Dan and his crew. Aside from what they experienced, they lost friends, men like brothers—over 300 of them. Dan went to an endless number of funerals, even those of firefighters he did not know. I guess it was his way (and the way of all firefighters) of making it up to those lost friends, co-workers, brothers. A “Thanks” for answering the call on September 11 and taking the fall.
I saw my husband begin to question his mortality, to accept all of the negative possibilities of his job, instead of just focusing on the glory. I saw a lot of sadness and anxiety in him, and I felt a lot of his sleepless nights from my side of the bed. The worst was the silence. He would not talk about anything that happened that day with anyone. He refused and got angry at suggestions of counseling. Yet the whole time he tried desperately to make me believe that he was okay; he never wanted me to worry.
Then one day, I was prompted to stop feeling so negatively about his job, lifestyle, and choices, because of something I believe to this day is quite remarkable. On the day Dan decided to talk about what happened to him on September 11, he didn’t go to counseling, or to his very trusted firefighter brothers at work; he came to me. He picked me.
September 11 changed our marriage. Actually, it changed me—our marriage has always been good. I just did not want to see myself in the role of “second,” sometimes, and took his job to heart every time he tried to do it. Through witnessing Dan’s actions during that week and his reactions afterwards, I understand why his dedication and involvement in his job is necessary and crucial to his success in it. The nature of firefighting is to live each day as if it is the last, and to take each job with full responsibility. For the people in his profession, if they miss a job that turns bad and their brothers die, they have to survive, not knowing if their presence would have been the difference that saved their brothers’ fives. For Dan, that is much worse than surviving at all. I respect him fully for that. I needed to ask myself what mattered more: my resentments or his peace of mind in knowing he is doing what feels right to him. His peace won out over my resentment.
Nowadays, we talk about other things instead of the firehouse: having a child, buying a home—things that normal couples talk about. I still resent the loud noise of the pager at night, and I still worry about him all the time, but I remind myself that his intentions are always the best and that he is careful. I still have to say the one thing I have always said to him before he starts a shift or answers a recall: “Remember, Dan, you have a wife waiting for you at home.” And I have finally realized that he does.
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How to cite this article
Stearns, C. (2003). A fireman’s wife: How 9/11 changed my feelings. Clio’s Psyche, 9(4), 164-165.
