Caught off guard

So I'm watching 102 Minutes, a documentary of 9/11 on the History Channel that pieces together video tape from various eye-witness accounts from apartments, trains, the ground, people's offices, you name it.

I used to live and work in Boston, at a newsstand in Copley Place. It's gone now but back in the late 90s, I got all kinds of clientele. The gang kids, the porn stars, the office peeps, the cops, the tourists, the rich foreigners there for medical treatment, a diverse clientele. 2 of the people I met became friends. Michael and Michelle. They were both Boston raised, both in bad neighborhoods, both in bi-lingual homes.

I lost touch with them around 2000 and so sent Chrismas cards and whatnot. I got a Christmas card, in, I think, March of 2002, from Michelle's mom. Her baby, my friend, Michael's wife, had died on 9/11. they had moved to NYC because the NYPD had offered them bonuses to come to the department, in a bid to increase minority officer numbers. Mickie and Mishy and both gone, her mom wrote. They live in Brooklyn and, on 9/11, Mishy'd called her mom to say it was her day off and she was going for a run then to do errands. Mickie was working a short shift.
Mishy's mom made her promise to call everyday before and after her shifts. It wasn't optional and Mishy always did it.
Her mom wrote that shortly after the 2nd tower was hit, Mishy called her to say she was going in and that she would call when she was home. or Mickie would call if she was too tired. Nobody called her. She didn't sleep for 3 days until finally she fell asleep of exhaustion and woke up late Friday night. She knew when she heard nothing on the 12th that Mishy hadn't made it out. 'I knew she was in heaven, I just knew.' I remembered her saying.

Cut to tonight. I'm watching this documentary and it's just random footage from average Joes, random images from all different places and angles. There's someone shooting a large group of NYPD officers and other 1st responders and then all of a sudden I see her, my friend Mishy, with this bicycle like helmet on, her small self there for a just a minute, prepping to go into 1 of the towers, to help people. Then it was gone.

I still, 7 years later, have moments when I think it's just a really bad dream. I know it's not; I know my life has changed tremendously since that day. Iknow that when the names were read at Ground Zero today, Mishy and her husband's were uttered.

When I asked her mom how she knew it was Mishy, she said 'they found enough of her to identify her and declare her dead. Also they brought her to me.'
Mishy would want us to remember she died doing what she loved, what she wanted and needed to be doing.

I miss my friend more today and I know that the best way I can remember her is to make sure people don't forget, get complacent, deny it. Remember that it happened, lest it happen again.