“Every weekday at 6:05, the Delapenha children would stand outside their home in Allendale, N.J., and wait for their father, Donald A. Delapenha, to come back from work. "As soon as they heard the train whistle, they would know, five more minutes,' said Mr. Delapenha's wife, Lorraine.”

        The children, ages 8, 6 and 2, gathered their bicycles and waited for the nightly ride around the neighborhood with their father, this according to The New York Times. “For Mr. Delapenha, getting home from his job as a senior vice president at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in the World Trade Center was often the best part of the day.”

        The Times does this wonderful thing since 9-11. It performs this poignant ritual of memory each Sunday on an ad-free, inside page of its Metro section. It remembers who died by celebrating how they lived.

        In a few paragraphs, the newspaper paints the grief portraits again, 12 or 13 at a time, whatever the page will hold. “She had a good job, and was a dedicated person,” recalled the sister of a victim. “And I wish I could've been more like her.”

        They aren't obituaries, exactly. I never read obits, lest I see the name of someone I know. You can't sum up someone's life in a few hundred words, anyway.

        These are different. In their simple, concise way, they remind us of the privilege and promise of living — and what little control we have over when it will stop.

        Jeffrey Hersch had just returned from a two-week vacation in Ireland and Scotland on Sept. 11, his first day back at work on the 101st floor of 1 World Trade Center. Mr. Hersch and his wife loved to travel. They'd visited 28 countries.

        “We both figured we'd retire at 59,” his wife Leslie Sue Hersch told the paper, “and do more traveling.” Jeffrey Hersch was 53.

        The lessons of 9-11 are both universal and personal. We've all felt the pain; we've reacted in different ways.

        “Do you ever get past this?” I asked Boomer Esiason the other day. He lives a short train ride from the city. The office of the Boomer Esiason Foundation was on the 101st floor of 1 WTC. Boomer knew some 75 people who died. One, his best friend, Tim O'Brien, was among those the Times profiled late last year.

        “It's a hard question,” Mr. Esiason said. “If you answer yes, you're looked at as unsympathetic. If no, you're seen as carrying it too far. There isn't a day goes by that we aren't reminded of it: terrorism, memorials, Fathers Day. Every birthday or anniversary that goes by is another reason to remember why these people aren't here any longer.”

        These people led joyous lives they no doubt regarded as ordinary. But there is nothing ordinary about living. Especially now.

        A few weeks ago, I sat on a mountaintop in North Carolina and looked at my son. We make this trip every June for a few days, right when school lets out. We venture to a magical place in the perfect blue-mountain nowhere and do a lot of nothing.

        There is this one mountain we always climb. When we get to the top, we spend several minutes taking in the 360-degree beauty. He is nearly 16, too young to reflect much on 9-11, and that is good.

        I am more than 44 and life feels brittle since nine months ago. Also, important. On the top of the mountain, I put my arm around my kid and tell him what he means to me.

        Contact Paul Daugherty by phone: 768-8454; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.
       

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