BOOKS: Love You, Mean It

Love You, Mean It:
A True Story of Love, Loss, and Friendship

Patricia Carrington, Julia Collins, Claudia Gerbasi, Ann Haynes
with Eve Charles
(Hyperion, 2006)
Hardcover, 320 pages, $23.95 U.S.

Love You, Mean It is a remarkable book; a loving tribute to four men who died on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center, written by their widows in alternating first person and group narrative. More than that, relevant beyond the annual commemoration of 9/11 events, and not limited to those directly affected in that tragedy, Love You, Mean It is four separate, very personal experiences of grief in one amazing story of friendship, strength and survival in the aftermath of unimaginable loss.

I cried from the very first pages, and all the way through Love You, Mean It -- and I couldn't put the book down. These are four women, our same age, just like us. Four fairy tale stories: coming-of-age, successful careers, dating, love and marriage; babies, families, dreams and happy futures, all gone in an instant. How do you survive? How do you go on with your life?

I can still remember the sequence of events that morning vividly, watching CNN in horror, my world safe and intact in Atlanta. I think most of us can, and always will remember our personal 9/11 experience. September 11, 2001, when those towers fell and we began to realize what had happened, what was happening, it was a national experience of tragedy: shock, loss, fear, grief, anger.

In Love You, Mean It, we experience four even more vivid personal recollections of those moments, when these women lost their husbands; and the aftermath -- days, weeks, months, years now -- on a very personal level.

"There's nothing that can prepare you for the things that happen to you in life. No matter how much you try, something will always be beyond comprehension, even after it's over and you can contemplate it with hindsight." (page 26)

That's a profound realization for a thirty-something woman in today's world, where we've been brought up striving to plan, and organize, and coordinate, and control our lives and our futures.

Jeremy "Caz" Carrington, Tom Collins, Bart Ruggiere, and Ward Haynes, by all accounts, lived life to the fullest. Their widows met almost a year after the tragedy, and discovered friendship, support and consolation they had not been able to find from well-meaning friends and family who suffered with them, but could not truly understand their grief, the way the other widows could. The WC (Widow's Club) began meeting regularly, traveling together each year to recover from the difficult anniversaries and commemoration events.

"It was the blind leading the blind, but it was like Claudia was the blind person who'd figured out how to get the dog and the white stick."

These are amazing women, heartbreaking stories, yet truly inspiring. The message that comes through again and again is the absence of fear, in the aftermath of such loss and grief, the willingness to try new things and take risks:

"After everything I've been through? This is nothing."

This is a book worth reading, celebrating, and sharing, in honor of the 5th anniversary of 9/11, and well beyond.