Twenty-Five Years After 9/11: Grief Learns Our Calendar

Twenty-five years ago, September 11, 2001, my wife Grace sat at her desk on the 105th floor of the North Tower. She was twenty-nine then. She remains twenty-nine forever. A quarter-century has passed long enough to teach us that grief never truly ends; it simply learns your calendar. Somewhere in early August, the tightening begins. The bracing starts. You count down to the morning you return to Ground Zero to face the place where Grace was taken from us.

There, I stand with every other family at the site, remembering our own lost loved ones. We recall how they were the kind of people who helped build the lives of everyone around them without ever asking for credit. We remember her last summer when her sister announced another baby was on the way and Grace hoped aloud for a girl. It was a girl. They named her Grace. That little girl is twenty-four now, and everything she knows about her aunt comes from stories told by others. In Grace's memorial guest book, a friend called her a brilliant light to everyone who knew her. She was that light, and the world lost nearly three thousand lights that morning. Every single one of them was somebody's Grace.

The ceremony itself offers a rare mercy in all this chaos. The bell rings at 8:46. Silence falls over the plaza. Loved ones read out loud the names, all 2,983 of them, for hours until every person is remembered. No speeches. No politicians at the microphone. Just the names. Whoever built it that way understood something vital: for one morning a year, the most famous piece of ground in America belongs to ordinary grieving people and no one else.

That quiet morning is getting harder to protect. Every year brings more cameras, more commentary, and more people with opinions standing near those who came to mourn. This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary, the time it should be most sacred, yet the story already shifts away from the victims. Now it revolves around the mayor.

For weeks now, coverage of this anniversary has turned into a political argument about the mayor of New York City. Will he attend? What does his presence mean? What did he say? What did he mean? Who is offended and who defends him? Every one of those stories ignores the 2,983 people murdered that day. Each day asks grieving families to spend the season they need for remembering on a political debate instead.

We are one month from the twenty-fifth anniversary of the worst day in most of our lives. So I will be plain about why so many of us cannot treat this mayor as just another dignitary in the crowd. In 2020, he called the NYPD "racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety" and demanded it be defunded. Twenty-three NYPD officers died saving people in those towers, and their names are cut into the memorial he would stand beside. When New Yorkers asked him again and again to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," a phrase many of us hear as a call for more mornings like the one that took Grace, he said it means different things to different people. He has praised a Brooklyn imam who served as a character witness for the Blind Sheikh, the man convicted of plotting terror attacks against this city. To the families in that plaza, these are wounds.

The anniversary of September 11 asks one thing of everyone who stands on that ground: an unambiguous rejection of the violence and the ideology that caused it, without hesitation and without ambiguity. The families should not have to wonder where their mayor stands. When cameras find him, and they will find him, the day stops belonging to the families and starts belonging to the fight.

That is why I started a petition on Change.org asking that this year's ceremony stay focused on the victims and their families. More than 83,000 people have joined me by signing the petition at change.org/911Ceremony.

The mayor needs to hear this clearly: on September 11, give the families back the plaza. People do not hate anyone here. They simply want one quiet morning without political noise or controversy. Removing a distraction is an act of kindness, not a punishment. This is my direct ask.

Grief does not hold parties. It ignores your vote. Somewhere next month, voices will call out names like Grace Catherine Galante. For just a few seconds, the entire world holds only her story. That is what this morning must be for. We cannot forget that truth.

Twenty-five years have passed since then. One morning should belong to them. Let us finally grant it.