September 11, 2001
Just a few weeks prior my mother had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on August 17th. I was on tour, as per usual, and playing in Hoboken, New Jersey. \
Saying I was at a gig in Hoboken sounds like I’m setting the stage for a film noir. Maybe I am?
We were on stage for an encore when I received the call at the club. I guess my cell phone wasn’t working or the reception was just poor. So after the encore I was told to go to the venue office and called the number that had been written down for me. It was my best friend from childhood, Lisa. She had been trying to get a hold of me to tell me my mom had a stroke and they didn’t think she would make it through the night.
I scrambled to find a late flight out of New York or New Jersey but could find neither. So our best bet was to just pile in and drive all night to Ohio.
My husband drove. I cried. And our dear friend from the UK, Jack, who had been touring with us on a work visa, was sharing in the weight of the moment. He too was slowly realizing how his life was about to be upended.
And, I remember, as we were driving away in the night I turned around in my seat to look back to see that fabulous Manhattan skyline one more time. The twin towers exclaiming the city.
So on into the night we drove and into the morning. The rest is a blur. By the time we arrived in Ohio mom had been transferred from the small town hospital where she had worked for years to Ohio State University Hospital in Columbus.
I took so many notes as her power of attorney and only child, and tried to make all the best decisions. I haven’t yet looked back at some of those notes. I don’t know that I’m ready for the trauma of that yet.
Somehow and in-spite of the odds stacked against her, she survived. But she would never be the same. She would likely never be independent again. She would likely never walk. It was too soon to tell.
We had some hope stashed away that we would quickly use up.
As the weeks passed my husband and I realized we had some heavy decisions to make ~ including moving mom to be nearer to me so I could oversee her care. Her long-term transitional care would be better attended at a highly skilled facility in Cincinnati.
In the meantime Linford and I had shut down our touring and had consequently lost the lion’s share of our income. We were a touring team. If one of us was down we were both out.
As we became more fully aware of the fact that I wouldn’t be able to leave my mother’s side for weeks, possibly months, it became clear that Linford would have to go back out on the road as a side musician to find some work.
It was so hard to know what to do. How to move forward. I needed to be with mom everyday and so Linford had to be the one to go back out on the road.
What is harder: leaving or being the one left behind?
I had worked to move mom to the Drake, a transitional care facility known to be one of the best throughout the region. She was doing fairly well. But not as well as some of the younger head trauma patients in her ward. She was suffering and depressed. She did not want to be there. Nor anywhere. As a nurse, she knew what this all meant and she vacillated between fury and futility complicating her own progress. I was the best cheerleader I could be. But it wasn’t enough.
Weekends are notorious for slip-ups in care facilities due to any number of reasons. It shouldn’t be that way but it is. This weekend was no exception.
On September 11, 2001, I woke up early on Monday, got dressed, and put our grand Weimaraner, Willow, in the van for a morning walk in a nearby park. Those walks saved me. Dogs often do. When I arrived at the park we did our usual loop and met a nice older gentleman with a dog breed I’d never seen before called a borzoi. She was a fabulous dog, and her owner and I spoke for a few minutes about the breed. Then I circled back to the van, and Willow and I climbed in and headed for home. I turned on NPR.
The familiar voices sounded different today. There was definitely some agitation, maybe even fear in the tone of the voices... and what were they talking about? Something had happened. Something bad. Back at home I turned on the small black and white television that we had perched on a stool in the kitchen. Jack and his wife, Hazel, and their newborn were staying with us in our rambling old three story Victorian house. Jack was just coming down to the kitchen where I had turned on the television in time to see the second plane hit one of the twin towers.
We couldn’t believe our eyes. We didn’t know what was happening but I felt like the world was ending. As we gathered the information and gathered ourselves, I picked up the landline phone to call my husband who was likely still asleep in a tiny bunk on a tour bus somewhere in one of the southeastern states.
He was barely awake and not yet aware of the terror attacks occurring in real time in our country... and in a true moment of weakness and vulnerability, I begged him to come home.
He wanted to come home so badly but we both knew he couldn’t. We didn’t know what was going to happen to us let alone what was happening to the world before our eyes, but he knew he had to stay out on the road and try to make a living ~ for us.
The uncertainty of all of our immediate futures intensified within these few hours. Jack and his family’s, ours...
And Mom’s.
Mom. I had to go to her. Somehow I had to tell her what was happening... or did I? What if she had already seen it on the television? Was she cognizant enough to understand? How would she handle it if she was? What on earth would I say to her? Were we under attack as a country? Yes. Did she need to know that? Was there anything she or anybody else could do about it in this moment?
I collected myself enough to drive over to the Drake and walked into the head trauma unit, which was always on lock down for the safety of the patients. When they buzzed me in, I walked straight to her room and was met with total chaos.
They had tried to get mom up out of bed, but no. They tried to just sit her up. But she couldn’t. She was far too weak. Her blood pressure was too low, her vitals were off, and she was not doing well at all. They suspected something was seriously wrong with her heart, and called an ambulance to have her rushed to the emergency room at nearby Jewish Hospital. At first I couldn’t understand why this renowned facility couldn’t just handle the situation in house and why she had to be transported yet again.
I didn’t even get a chance to ask mom what she knew about the plane crashes or the collapse of the towers, or if she’d seen anything on the TV. All I knew was now I was following an ambulance with my mother in it headed from one trauma to the next.
I called my friend, Marilyn. I couldn’t face this day alone. Not one more second. I don’t remember what I said to her. I might have asked her to pray for me? Maybe I asked her to come... and of course she did. She came to the emergency room to sit with me and to wait, and she held my hand as we both stared at the television high above us bolted on to the wall of the busy ER waiting room.
We sat and we stared in disbelief.
I’m crying as I’m writing these words because I know I could not have survived that day with any semblance of sanity or strength without her. We sat and we listened and we waited and she held me up. When the doctor came to speak with me and said my mom was going to be OK I was so relieved and so deeply exhausted.
Then the attending cardiologist said that a grievous mistake had apparently been made at the Drake, and the physician in training over the weekend had erroneously moved a single decimal point on the chart, causing one of mom’s medications to be drastically increased, which in turn caused her heart to go into AFib.
The doctor presumed that there was no permanent damage done, but couldn’t be sure.
Her poor body. Her scrambled mind. Her defeated will to live.
They transported her back to the Drake, and I worked furiously to get her the hell out of there as quickly as I could. They were in their best full on cover-up phase and knew they screwed up.
At the time I didn’t have the strength to consider legal action and all I cared about was getting my mom somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Someplace better.
The silver lining came when I found a facility for her transitional care that was perfectly suited for her needs, and it ended up being where she spent the bulk of her final years. I felt very good about her care there and developed some lifelong relationships with some of the nurses and members of her care team that I still treasure to this day.
All of those events happening in my little life on September 11th still tumble together into one nearly unbearable memory. All of those people that lost their lives so needlessly. The horror of the planes intentionally crashing into multiple buildings. The collapse. The images of people running in the streets of that beautiful city. The plane going down in a Pennsylvania field just one state over. The stories told and songs written.
I struggled to board a plane without an anti-anxiety medication after 9/11. The trauma of every moment of the previous few weeks had already flooded my body with toxins, causing me to be physically ill for months following. I underwent hypnosis. I was already in counseling. I couldn’t get on a plane alone. I tried to appear composed on the outside but on the inside I was shattered.
As I dealt with the additional fallout of an unnecessary mistake made by a physician in training, whose name they refused to share, whose actions nearly killed my mother, my resilience weakened.
My partner was out on the road trying to earn a living for us in the interim. The simple gift of my friend Marilyn holding my hand may have saved me.
September 11, 2001.
All of these things.
How could I ever forget.
Today, this September 11 morning is overcast and cool breaking the heat we had yesterday. It is quiet here in the rural space where I live now. Again we find ourselves unable to tour, but this time because of a pandemic and the shut down of my entire industry.
Our country has recently lost over 190,000 lives to a virus. We haven’t found the resolve as a nation to agree on a unified response.
I’m curious as to what next September 11 will look like. I think we all are.
My mother has since passed away, slipping through the veil some 19 months ago, her ashes spread in one of her favorite places, Carmel-by-the-Sea.
I wonder what she would say today if she could. I wonder what she would tell me.
Maybe she would urge me to continue to lean hard into the questions. Speak truth as I am able. Stay open, resilient. Continue to work. Hope. Trust. Live.
~Karin Bergquist 9/11/2020