For Some, a Time of Quiet Bereavement

NEW YORK — Really, it is unavoidable. But some will try today to escape the intensity of a million pieces of this city coming together to remember what happened here a year ago.

One widow has rented a room in a New Jersey shore town and asked the hotel to remove the television and radio. She does not want to see her grief teased on the evening news. She does not want to glimpse Fifth Avenue department stores that have removed their window displays and etched “In Remembrance” or “Never Again” on the glass. She wants to be with her memories, says a friend. Alone.

Debbie Harrison plans to attend a morning service at her Queens church, then go to nearby Flushing Meadow Park, where she and Charles John, her late partner of six years, used to spend lazy weekend afternoons. John, a security supervisor at the Fiji Bank, died at the World Trade Center.

“I’m going to sit by the water at the park as long as I can stand it and say some things out loud,” Harrison said.

She is consciously avoiding ceremonies at ground zero: “No, never, never, never. It’s too much. I don’t like anybody telling me how to grieve.”

Many victims’ families declined offers from the president and the mayor to participate in ground zero’s somber pageantry. Nobody kept track of how many or why these widows and mothers and fathers did not want to commiserate, read names of the dead or lay a rose at the site.

As one who said yes to being there when President Bush arrives today, Michael Cartier, whose 26-year-old brother, James, died, fully understands why many might say no.

“People are still just waking up and starting now to grieve and couldn’t possibly make it downtown,” said Cartier, who added that his parents are “paralyzed still, still unable to cope.” His father, a Korean War veteran, has never visited ground zero. His mother went once.

Today, both parents will go to Mass in the morning and to James’ grave in the afternoon, where they’ll release a white dove. Then, the six Cartier children will gather at their parents’ home “to be together with our memories of James,” said Michael, who is the youngest sibling.

But it’s difficult to avoid the anniversary altogether because there is so much to remind New York of what was. There is the sky this week, a cloudless blue--the way it was that whole horrible day. And the rhythms of a city coming to life in September after an August vacation.

There is also the media coverage of the anniversary, coverage that comes now around the clock. And the fact that almost every institution in this city, from churches and schools and temples to hair salons and delis and banks, is making some sort of Sept. 11 statement.

A thrift shop on Manhattan’s Columbus Avenue has scribbled “Everyday Heroes” on its windows; a Brooklyn beauty salon has erected a shrine in its front lobby displaying police and fire T-shirts; and a small consulting firm is closed today, leaving a voice message explaining to its clients around the nation that “all New Yorkers are in mourning today. We’ll be open Thursday.”

“We thought it would be unseemly not to close,” said Mark Penski, a business consultant, who is at a loss about what he will do rather than work. “I can’t go to a mall, but I can’t turn on the TV either.”

News executives acknowledge that coverage of the anniversary is inescapable--and perhaps overdone. In fact, every New York City newspaper’s front page on Tuesday was entirely about Sept. 11 or its aftermath.

ABC “World News Tonight” anchor Peter Jennings said in his Monday e-mail to viewers, “We do hear from some of you that it’s all too much, and there are moments when we all must feel that we are being overwhelmed. But in this newsroom, we hope that when the day is done on Wednesday, we will look back believing that our journey through history and memory will have meant something to everyone.”

Even some journalists can’t stomach the coverage, although it might be unprofessional to admit it. A CNN correspondent who has been covering the story said she does not plan to turn on her television today--unless she must.

“The last thing I need to see is images already burned into the brain. I don’t need to have them underlined, made more vivid,” said the correspondent, who asked not to be identified.

Grieving experts say that “too much,” of course, is a relative term. Some survivors and victims’ families will watch it all, attend every church and civic ceremony, read each name of the 2,819 World Trade Center dead as they are listed this week in newspapers or scrolled on television screens. But others, like the widow at the Jersey Shore and Debbie Harrison, couldn’t possibly immerse themselves that way. Watching the replays of the commandeered airliners ramming into the towers is like seeing their loved ones die, over and over again.

“I can’t watch that, not today, not tomorrow especially,” Harrison explained. That said, she is unsure how alone she wants to be on the anniversary: “I have lots of people, friends, standing by waiting for a phone call. I don’t know if I want to be alone or with people, if I want to know about the ceremonies or not. I have no idea what I want to do.”

“An anniversary is a big stage in grieving, and one way to meet it is to retreat,” said Msgr. Michael Connelly, who, if he wasn’t an expert on loss after 20 years of tending his parishioners in the Rockaways, has become one in the last 12 months. His community lost 75 people in the World Trade Center attacks.

“One of the widows here decided not to have her children come to our Mass, that they were better off in school,” Connelly said. She wanted a “normal” day for them, if possible, he said.

Still, the people Connelly has observed having the most difficult time with the anniversary, surprisingly enough, are not the ones who lost family but those who lost jobs.

“I’ve talked to a lot of young people who are still out of work because of 9/11 and are almost bitter because there is so much celebration this week,” Connelly said sympathetically.

But celebration is an odd word, said Bart Helms, an office worker who walked down 22 flights of a tower to safety before it fell. He is going water skiing with his girlfriend today on a lake in upstate New York. They are going to swim and picnic and maybe play miniature golf.

“I can’t run away from this day and say I’m not going to feel something,” he said. “But I can celebrate with a willful act of enjoying life. That’s my way of remembering.”

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Times staff writer Elizabeth Jensen contributed to this report.