I was supposed to go to Cabo next week, vacation with the girls, but I�m trying to switch my ticket for one to New York, to attend funeral services for my cousin, Jeffrey, a missing NY Fire Fighter. For information on where he was, who he was with and when and how he disappeared, go to my archives and read the entries on 9/12 & 9/14. My family has finally resigned themselves to the fact that Jeffrey is dead, that they may never find his body in the wreckage that used to be the WTC. It�s interesting how they came to that conclusion, though, almost like one of those religious emails you hate getting forwarded. Here�s what happened:

Aunt Carol and Jane (Jeffrey�s mother and sister) were driving in Jane�s van when Aunt Carol switched on the stereo and the song, Fragile, by Sting began to play. Frozen, she looked to her daughter and asked, �is this your CD?� To which Jane said, �No, must be Roger�s, why?� �This is the song Jeffrey chose to play when he danced with me at his wedding years ago, don�t you remember?� Jane did remember then, and asked why Jeffrey had chosen this song for the mother-son dance at the wedding. Aunt Carol had no answer, just that he loved the song, and it made him think of his mother (who worked in the crack-baby ward of a hospital for years, saving and losing fragile little lives every day). Wondering what the words were, they got home and looked up the lyrics on the internet. Have you ever heard this song?

I�d like to post the whole song, but most of it is repetition, and I have here all you need in order to understand why this means so much to us. If you�re interested in the full version, go to google.com and look up Fragile Lyrics. Here are the first 2 verses:

�Blood will flow when flesh and steel are one,

Drying in the color of the evening sun,

Tomorrow�s rains will wash the stains away,

But something in our minds will always stay.�

�Perhaps this final act was meant to clinch a lifetime�s argument,

�Cause nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could,

For all those born beneath an angry star,

Lest we forget how fragile we are.�

When they got inside, Jane asked her husband, Roger, where the CD came from. He said he was digging through the rubble (as he has been every single day since the evening of the day the building collapsed on his brother-in-law), looking for Jeffrey, when he came upon a CD player that was somehow still in fairly good condition. He opened it up, saw the untouched CD, pocketed it, and popped it in the player when he got in the van to drive home. My family, not believing in coincidence, saw this as a sign. In the same area where Jeffrey is presumed dead, a CD is found, intact, with the song this missing hero chose at his wedding to dance with his mother, and his mother happened to turn it on while driving her daughter�s car and put it all together.

During the telethon on Friday, Sting sang that song. Before, it was a beautifully touching song shared by a mother and son, now it is a bittersweet symbol of one that we�ve lost.

�On and on the rain will fall

Just like tears from a star, just like tears from a star,

On and on the rain will say,

Just how fragile we are, just how fragile we are.�

Jeffrey, we heard you. We love you. We miss you.

-Barbarella

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