By Jonann Brady
While she rode, Megan carried a photo of the two of them on top of a mountain.
"There were times I was literally talking to the picture, saying, 'Get me up this hill,'" said the Baldwin native.
Nine hours later, she completed the ride and returned to a nearly empty parking lot. Most of the riders had finished hours earlier.
Did the ride help her ease the pain?
"I thought it would help," she said. "It did that day..."
It's been a year since she lost Mario, and the days have melted together. "For me it's been like one long day," she said. "People seem to be going on with their lives and not really thinking about it....It's always in the back of my head."
She described the past year as a "time warp." It is as if she lives in a parallel universe as the rest of the world goes on around her. She left her apartment in Queens and returned to the comfort and safety of her parents' home in Baldwin. A high school teacher in Astoria, she taught only one class during the spring semester. Where once she and Mario would explore the city together, she is afraid to go in now. She doesn't sleep well.
Even at the counseling sessions she attends for the families of Sept. 11 victims at South Nassau Hospital, she feels off-kilter among the wives and mothers and children. Though she and Mario were in love and planned to get married, she has no "official" documentation of their relationship. She has not received a penny of the millions of dollars allocated for victims' families.
"I have not found anyone in my position," she said. "It's an awkward position, a forgotten about position."
Past her grief, Megan remains angry. Angry that the attacks weren't prevented, angry at the pace of rebuilding lower Manhattan and that money seems to be the motivating factor. Angry that officials seem to pay only lip service to victims' loved ones. Angry that no one -- the government, the media, the "experts" -- seems to be speaking the truth.
She plays out "what-if" scenarios in her head. She recently heard a report about air traffic controllers watching the planes for 10 or 11 minutes before they hit the building. If that was the case, why couldn't they have warned people, she wonders?
"I don't know what's the truth and what's exaggerated," she said. "I just wish they could tell us the truth. We deserve to know why."
But the answer to that question won't be answered, she admits, at least not anytime soon. And so as the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, she prepares for the relentless images of the Towers falling that will no doubt bombard the television. She needs to remember, but not that way.
On Sept. 3, Megan will board the Long Island Rail Road with the other commuters and return to her classroom in Astoria full time. On Sept. 11, she will not board the train to work, nor will she travel to Manhattan to be part of the ceremony at the site. Maybe she will spend the day with Mario's family in Staten Island. Or maybe she will stay at the house in Baldwin, waiting for the day to pass.
"I'm safe in here," she said, gesturing her arms around the sunny kitchen on Emerson Avenue. "But you have to try to go out and function."
