What a dose of reality. And what a lousy week. I used to work in municipal bonds for the state. I did lots of business on Wall Street, have been in the WTC at least 30 times. I had many friends there. From what I have heard from others up there, and seen, some of those friends are surely dead now. I talked to one lawyer I am very good friends with. He was not in the building-on vacation. Their firm was located where one of the planes hit. If he had been at work, he would have been incinerated. All of his colleagues are gone.<P>Puts my own personal 'tragedy' in perspective. At least my wife and kids are still alive. As long as there is life, there is hope. I feel, strangely, somehow renewed. What looked like the end of the world yesterday when W blew up counseling process and said, definitively and with ice-cold prose 'it's over, we ARE going to be divorced', doesn't look quite as terrible now. A setback to be sure, but today is not tomorrow, and tomorrow is not yesterday. She may change her will again-there is still lots of time in front of us.<P>I resolved to continue working MY changes. Back to Plan A after major downhill slide. She will see the changes. If she picks up on them, great. If not, someone else will. I feel truly detached today. I am really no longer hoping for anything, and I know the road I must follow. Maybe that road will lead back to her. Maybe not. I know now that if it is not, the road will nonetheless go on.<P>I had a really low day today-like everyone else. She called me at work this morning to tell me about the WTC. She knows I have friends there. She brought kids over for tonight as usual. I think she was genuinely concerned for me, maybe partly out of guilt for yesterday, partly because she could see my pain over my friends. It was very hard telling her some of them are gone. I asked her for a hug, and she gave it willingly. It made me feel better. We will probably be divorced in a year, but that doesn't seem quite so tragic now. Either way, I am determined to be a better person then than I am now. If not for her, or even me, maybe for my friends.<P>I pray for them and all the others tonight.
