The following from a fellow writer:

"Friday, I heard from a friend who is on the board of Nassau County
Child and Family Guidance Services. Nassau is the first county outside
New York City (past Brooklyn and Queens) and it is a great bedroom
community for Manhattan businesses. The North Shore, one of the highest
income Zip Codes in the US, is heavily populated by Wall Street type.
Therefore, the toll here is particularly high.

I don't have numbers of how many people in my town are missing; sporadic
reports are horrific. But in the town next to us, Manhasset, 200 people
have perished!!! In Roslyn and Garden City together, another 100 !!! In
Mineola, a major train station, they didn't know what to do with all the
cars in the parking lot.

My friend's agency is exploding at the seams trying to help grieving
families. They send people to go with families to identify bodies in
morgues, to counseling kids who go outside every day to wait for daddy
to come home... Then there are their schoolmates. The disappearances of
their friends' Mom or Dad stir up whole new sets of emotions and
problems. This fear among children happens in other parts of the
country, too, I am sure, but in a class where 15 parents didn't come
home one day, it is more real devastating.

Saturday, in memorial services to missing firefighters, they called the
public to attend because these firefighters' friends are out at the WTC
ruins, working, and there weren't enough people to honor the bravery of
the dead.

On local TV, I saw an interview with a mother whose both daughters
worked together and perished together. I couldn't stop crying seeing
these beautiful young women's pictures, two sisters who played together
and shared everything in their lives--and in their deaths.

Also, my friend told me that in one church this weekend there were 40
memorials and funerals.

We hurt for those we know that have lost loved ones. We mourn when
talking to family members and friends. We touch base to sense each
other, to give and draw comfort. But in the end, we mourn alone. Each of
us has a picture of the event. It will stay with each of us forever. It
pops up at unexpected moments. It projects itself on the screen of our
inner eye when we try to sleep, when we laugh, when we try to go on with
the mundane things that is called life."