Twenty-Five Years Later: Where Was God on September 11th?

It truly is up to us to Never Forget the heroes and victims of September 11th, 2001. But the sad reality is that while the attacks happened twenty-five years ago, September 11th is still taking lives. The NYPD lost 23 members that day. In the years since, hundreds more members of the Department have died from 9/11-related illnesses, including my former partner, Lieutenant Paul Murphy, while thousands more continue to battle cancers and other serious conditions.

Across the entire 9/11 community, the toll is even greater. Thousands of responders and survivors have died in the years since, while tens of thousands continue to live with illnesses associated with their exposure.

Even those of us who survived the attack did not simply walk away from it.

September 11, 2001

That Tuesday morning was Primary Election Day in New York City. I was an NYPD sergeant working a day tour, visiting polling locations.

For me, it began as just another workday. That changed quickly.

The first report we heard was that there had been an explosion at the World Trade Center. My first thought was remarkably mundane: This is going to create absolute havoc with traffic.

As we were pulling up to a polling location, another call came over. A plane had struck the North Tower.

My mind immediately went to a small commuter aircraft or perhaps a sightseeing helicopter. Both were common sights along the Hudson and East Rivers. At that point, the idea that a commercial airliner had deliberately been flown into the World Trade Center was simply beyond comprehension.

Then came the report of the second plane. We knew we were under attack.

My driver took us to the Special Operations Division, where for the first time I was able to see the television coverage. Looking at those images, it became painfully apparent that these were not small aircraft.

I had quit smoking about a week earlier.

I called my wife and told her that I was “quitting quitting.”

I knew a cigarette shop nearby and had my driver stop. I ran inside for a pack and discovered that, of all things, they were out of my brand.

The clerk and I just stared at each other.

I could have bought something else, but for whatever reason, I didn't. I walked back outside almost as if I were trying to process this strange little inconvenience in the middle of everything happening around us.

My driver asked if we were ready to go.

“No,” I told him. “They're out of my brand.”

So we went somewhere else.

I got my cigarettes, and we immediately headed toward Manhattan.

During the drive, I called my wife again and told her where we were going.

She panicked.

“You can't go in,” she told me. “You don't have your vest.”

In one of those strangely funny moments that somehow occur even on the darkest of days, I replied: “They're flying planes into buildings. I don't think my vest is going to help me.”

We had only been married for a couple of years. For her, I think that moment brought a sudden realization of what being married to a police officer could mean.

Because this is what we do.

We run toward the danger, not away from it.

Going In

The drive toward Manhattan was difficult. Cars had been abandoned in the roadway, forcing us to weave around them and drive along the shoulders.

At one point the view ahead opened up and I could see the Twin Towers.

Black smoke billowed from them against an otherwise crystal-clear blue September sky.

When we reached the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, there was a firetruck stopped near the toll plaza. As we were about to pass it, a firefighter jumped out and stopped us.

Before I could really process what was happening, a wall of smoke and debris came pouring out of the tunnel.

Then came civilians.

They were running out, covered from head to toe in gray ash.

For a moment, I thought the tunnel itself had been attacked.

My mind was still focused on one thing: get to the World Trade Center.

I directed my driver toward the Brooklyn Bridge instead.

By the time we got there, we encountered an enormous mass of people trying to get out of Manhattan. It quickly became obvious that we weren't going to drive much farther, so we took the first exit we could.

I remember looking at my driver and saying:

“I have no idea what's going to happen, but it's been an honor working with you.”

I suppose that was the moment when I finally resigned myself to the enormity of what we were heading into, as well as the danger.

We abandoned the car. And then the job changed.

The Never-Ending Wave

Instead of getting to the World Trade Center, we found ourselves helping evacuate civilians.

Much of what followed is a blur.

What I remember most clearly are the people. They just kept coming.

Wave after wave of humanity moved away from Lower Manhattan, looking to police officers, firefighters and anyone else in authority for direction. We treated the injured where we could and kept everyone moving away from the danger.

It seemed endless.

The evacuation of Lower Manhattan that day was extraordinary. Hundreds of thousands fled on foot, while an improvised armada of ferries, tugboats, Coast Guard vessels and private boats carried hundreds of thousands more across the surrounding waterways. Estimates put the number upwards of a million people.

For comparison, the legendary evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II rescued approximately 338,000 Allied troops over nine days.

We did it in nine hours.

Standing there in the middle of it, though, there were no statistics.

There were simply people.

And they didn't seem to end.

Where Was God?

In the years that followed, I was repeatedly asked a question: “Where was God on September 11th?”

As a survivor and as a Christian, I heard it often. Some people asked because they genuinely needed an answer. Others asked out of anger.

Eventually, I realized that I needed an answer of my own.

That search ultimately led me to write my book, Where Was God?

The deeper I went into that question, the more I came to believe something very simple: God was where He always is.

Later that night, when I finally reached Ground Zero, I stood looking at a place I had known intimately. Except now I barely recognized it.

The devastation was almost impossible to comprehend. The pile was indescribable from ground level. Fires burned throughout the debris. Smoke hung everywhere.

Looking at it, I could not understand how anyone could possibly have survived.

And yet, they did.

Approximately 17,000 people were inside the Twin Towers that morning. Nearly 87 percent escaped.

The buildings were only about one-third to one-half occupied when the attacks occurred. Had both towers contained their full populations of roughly 20,000 people each, investigators would later estimate that approximately 14,000 people might have died because there would not have been enough time to evacuate them all.

The towers stood 110 stories high—more than a quarter-mile into the sky.

Yet neither toppled sideways across Lower Manhattan.

One structural engineer would later estimate that had a tower fallen outward into the surrounding city, casualties might have reached 100,000.

None of that diminishes the almost unimaginable loss of 2,977 innocent lives that day, but it reminds us that amid an act designed to produce death on an almost incomprehensible scale, thousands upon thousands lived.

For hours afterward, we desperately hoped survivors would continue to be found beneath the rubble.

One more was.

The Angel in the Rubble

Her name was Genelle Guzman-McMillan.

Genelle was a Port Authority employee working on the 64th floor of the North Tower. She and several coworkers managed to descend more than fifty floors before the building collapsed around them.

She had made it to approximately the 13th floor. Then the world came down.

Genelle survived inside a tiny pocket beneath the mountain of concrete and steel. Badly injured and unable to free herself, she remained trapped for approximately 27 hours and she prayed.

Genelle has recounted that while she lay beneath the rubble, believing she might die there, she asked God to save her and promised that if He gave her another chance at life, she would change the way she lived.

Eventually she heard voices.

She cried out and worked at the debris with the one hand she could move.

Then, according to Genelle, a hand reached through the rubble and took hers.

A man reassured her.

His name, he told her, was Paul.

For Genelle, what happened beneath that rubble became something much more than a rescue. She came to believe that God had answered her prayer.

She ultimately described that experience in her memoir, Angel in the Rubble.

And at approximately midday on September 12th, after some 27 hours buried beneath the ruins of the North Tower, Genelle Guzman-McMillan became the last person pulled alive from the World Trade Center rubble.

And What About Me?

God didn't cause September 11th.

Men did.

But I believe God moved in the lives of those who rescued people that day.

I believe He moved in the lives of firefighters and police officers climbing stairwells while thousands of people were coming down.

I believe He moved through the paramedics, construction workers, ferry captains, tugboat crews and ordinary citizens who saw people in danger and chose to help them.

I believe He was present in the seemingly insignificant delays that caused some people to arrive late for work that morning.

And I believe God saved me with something as insignificant as a pack of cigarettes.

It wasn't until much later that I put the timing together. Had that first store had my brand of cigarettes, I would have been further along on my journey into Manhattan.

Based on our route and timing, I believe I would have been at the South Tower around the time it collapsed.

Of all the things that happened to me that day, that delay is one I have never forgotten.

A cigarette store didn't have my brand that day, but it gave me the next twenty-five years.

Twenty-Five Years Later

September 11th demonstrated the extraordinary things human beings are capable of doing to one another, but it also demonstrated the extraordinary things human beings are capable of doing for one another.

For me, that distinction matters.

The Bible begins with humanity being given a perfect world—and choosing to turn away from God. We have been living with the consequences of human choices ever since.

September 11th, like so many horrific events throughout human history, demonstrated the terrible depths to which mankind can descend when hatred consumes the human heart and faith itself becomes twisted into a justification for evil.

So perhaps, after twenty-five years, the question isn't simply: “Where was God?”

Perhaps the question we should be asking is: “Where are we?”

What have we done with the years we have been given?

What have we done for the people around us?

Have we remembered those who never received another morning after September 11th?

Have we remembered those who survived that day, only to lose their lives years later because of it?

Have we remembered the families who still carry those empty places at their tables?

And have we remembered how, on one of the darkest days in American history, ordinary people did extraordinary things for complete strangers?

Never Forget cannot simply be something we say once a year.

It has to mean something.

If you have never trusted in God, I would encourage you to reach out to Him. On this 25th anniversary, as we remember those we lost and those we continue to lose, I leave you with the words of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

May we never forget those who were taken from us.

May we never forget those who ran toward the danger.

May we never forget those who are still suffering.

And may we never forget how precious—and how uncertain—the gift of another day truly is.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

May God bless you, and may God bless all those whose lives were forever changed on September 11th, 2001.

September 11th, Charlie Kirk, and Exposed King

I am sitting here this morning feeling a sense of numbness as I deal with the normal emotions of September 11th coupled with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I say ‘normal’ because as an NYPD first responder on that day I have grudgingly accepted that the emotions are part of who I am now. I stopped trying to make sense of it long ago, and now I just accept that there is an ebb and flow that I must ride out annually. I don’t fight it; I just let the memories come in and go out, because you cannot make ‘sense’ of what happened twenty-four years ago.

On September 11th, 2001, we came together as a country. At first we felt rage and anger about the terrorist attack. Then we felt the collective pain as we came to terms with the fact that we’d lost thousands of our fellow citizens; men, women and children who would never see another sunrise; people who woke up and died because of someone else’s hatred. Then there was a brief moment of solidarity: United We Stand, Never Forget, Remember the Heroes… but like most altruistic slogans, it had no depth.

Yesterday, September 10th, 2025, a 31-year-old husband and father of two small children was assassinated in Utah. His crime? Having a dissenting opinion.

Charlie Kirk was on a university campus, a world where dissenting opinions have traditionally been fostered and embraced, but yesterday we were told, in no uncertain terms, that this world no longer exists.

A man was murdered in cold-blood and many cheered at his demise.

A bullet became the ultimate form of censorship.

It reminded me of the line spoken by Tyrion Lannister in George R.R. Martin’s book: Clash of Kings – “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

This is America now. This is who we have become. Not United, but divided to the point that murder has become an acceptable course of action against those whom we disagree with.

I released my last James Maguire book, Glass Castle, in 2019. As most good authors, I had the working plot for the next book, Exposed King, in my head. I remember that I struggled a bit with it, because it had what I felt was a radical leap, or, to use the old Happy Days trope, I felt like I was ‘jumping the shark’ with this story-line, but I told myself that I could polish it and make it plausible. I’d moved on to the next Alex Taylor book, The Killing Game, as I compiled notes and ideas and fleshed-out the outline.

Then Covid-19 happened.

I thought it was my time to shine, to get the downtime I needed to write my little heart out.

I finished The Killing Game, I wrote Awakening, a genre bending police procedural meets vampires, got in another Cold Case novella, and even managed to write: Shadow Strike, a Maguire origin story, but Exposed King languished in a file on my computer.

I wrote some chapters, which were more like snippets or frustrated paragraphs, in fits and starts, struggling as I went, as if some unseen force was trying to block me. As a writer, I knew I had to walk away. Forcing it would never work. I kept asking myself why I was having so much of a problem.

It’s fiction. I’m a writer. This is what I do.

The truth is I fear that Exposed King won’t be fiction. The premise is less of a ‘who done it’ and more of a ‘what if.’

As I said earlier, the plot came to me during Glass Castle, pre-dating Covid, but also George Floyd and before the Defund the Police movement and all the other radical events since. With each passing day, I saw my fictional plot growing potentially more real, and it scared me.

America is changing, and not for the better.

For nearly a hundred years, Superman’s iconic motto was: “Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” and yet today we find ourselves facing an America where truth is subjective, justice is no longer impartial, and the American way is abhorrent to a large swath of society.

I know I have to finish Exposed King; I just hope it remains within the realm of fictional work and does not become a prescient warning.

A part of me wonders if George Orwell felt the same way when he published 1984.

May God have mercy on us.

9/11 World Trade Center Cross taken by anne bybee

REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 10TH, 2001

“Where were you on September 11th, 2001?”

It’s a question I have heard asked countless times over the last two plus decades. Everyone recalls where they were on that fateful day when they heard the news about the terrorist attacks in NYC, Shanksville, PA and the Pentagon. I’m no different, and I wrote about my story in my book: Where Was God? An NYPD first responder’s search for answers following the terror attack of September 11th 2001.

But for many of us, the memories of 9/11 don’t begin on that day. There is an emotional lead up that culminates in 9/10; the last day before our world was forever and irrevocably changed. I’m sure if I had the chance to speak with a veteran who was at Pearl Harbor on December 6th, 1941, they would share the same story. Remembering the last time that things were ever ‘normal.’

I remember September 10th.

I spent the evening watching Monday Night Football, sitting in bed feeling frustrated, because I had to get up early the next morning to cover the NYC primary election. I was glued to the game, watching my beloved NY Giants eventually lose to the Denver Broncos.  

That’s my last memory of normal.

At that time I had been a cop for over 15 years. I thought I had seen just about everything, but a few hours after waking up, I would learn just how wrong I was.

For the 23 members of the service we lost on 9/11, they never enjoyed another normal day. Twenty-Two years later, many of us have been forced to embrace a new normal, as we struggle with health issues due to exposure of toxins at Ground Zero. The scourge of cancer almost loses its sting when you realize that it is most likely not a question of if, but when.

You reflect a lot on the fact that 9/11 wasn’t a singular terrorist attack, but a generational one that continues to claim lives two decades later. It’s difficult to embrace normal when you get constant notifications alerting you that we’ve lost another first responder to a 9/11 illness.   

Tomorrow politicians and pundits will dust off the tired old mantra: Never Forget, but the reality is we are forgotten; only remembered one day a year and then put back into the closest until the next anniversary. The majority of them have never had to struggle with having a normal day. The constant political fight to fund the 9/11 Health Program proves just how quickly they forget and move on.

Today I reflect on what life was like before that day and tomorrow I will mourn those we lost; killed in the initial attack or its lingering aftermath. Tomorrow will be about ‘remembering the heroes,’ but knowing that the door will close again on September 12th for another year.

WTC Cross Photo courtesy of Anne Bybee-Williams © 2001

September 11th – Never Forget

It’s funny to me that each September you begin hearing the words ‘Never Forget’ being repeated.

I don’t say this dismissively, and I am truly grateful to all those who remember the bravery and faithfulness of our fallen, but as I look around at what is going on in this country I cannot help but feel these words are becoming hollow platitudes.

Just recently, the 9/11 community was in an all-out political battle to fight for funding to treat many of us who are sick as a result of the toxins we ingested back then. September 12th, 2002, united this country and gave rise to the words ‘Never Forget.’ Yet the same politicians who draped themselves in the flag and chastised us to not forget were the very same ones who pushed back on the promise this country made to us.

I look around and I am deeply troubled, as I see this new generation, many whom were not even alive when the terror attack occurred, desecrating memorials to our fallen heroes and victims, because they go against their current world view. Those people who have never put themselves in harm’s way for another human being, mocking those that gave the last full measure.

 The words ‘Never Forget’ mean something different to a select few. While the world proclaims that we should Never Forget, some understand that for them it is ‘Can’t Forget.’

Can’t Forget means that you can never look at a clear blue sky and find comfort.

Can’t Forget means that the sound of a low flying plane sends a wave of panic through you.

Can’t Forget means that in the shadow of a global pandemic a mask brings no comfort, only bad memories.

Can’t Forget means that the sight of flames and the scent of acrid smoke forever rekindles a hell that no one should ever know.

Can’t Forget means that to those who wear this, you are bound to a brother & sisterhood that is sacred, not for what we did, but for what they gave:  Fidelis Ad Mortem

NYPD World Trade Center Medal

Can’t Forget means that, by the grace of God, you survived, but the names and faces of those we lost are forever etched into our hearts and minds.

“From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.” - William Shakespeare’s Henry V

Remembering Jax: You Gotta Bee-lieve

Those of you who follow me know that our beloved Irish Wolfhound, Jax, died unexpectedly Friday morning. We knew our time with him was short, as he had the onset of congestive heart failure, but was being treated with meds and receiving regular care by our amazing local vet and the cardiac vets at the University of Illinois – Urbana. Unbeknownst to any of us he had stomach issues that went undiagnosed until it was too late.

No matter how big he got, he was always our puppy….

This is a long post and has taken me a week to write. I had to stop frequently, because these damn eyes wouldn’t let me see the keyboard, but I needed to memorialize this, for both him and I. As a writer, you would think that the words would have come easily, but they didn’t. How do you describe the pain of losing someone who was an integral part of your life?

Jax was the first dog I had as a puppy. We got him when he was only a few weeks old. Ironically, he was not even the dog we went to look at. We went to see his sister, Big Brownie, but she didn’t want anything to do with us, and then there was this little runt, Blackie, who wouldn’t leave us alone. He crawled all over us and played with the kids. It was as if he was crying out, ‘take me, take me.’ What can I say, we left with him and thus began Jax’s new life with us.

Nothing prepares you for life with a big dog and Irish Wolfhounds hold the number one spot as the world’s tallest breed. It’s like getting pregnant and finding out you’re having quintuplets. He looked like a puppy, okay a gangly goofy puppy, but that didn’t last long. People thought we were joking when we said we’d put him in the crate at night and he’d come out bigger. Folks, it was no joke!!

What were we feeding him ?

At times it was hard to remember he was just a puppy, because he soon dwarfed every other dog. But he was goofy and loveable and had the warmest brown eyes you’d ever seen. And he loved our cats and, weirder still, they loved him. During the winter months it was not uncommon to see them sharing his bed in the living room, next to the fireplace, and in the summer laying on the deck together.

You know you are loved, when the cats adopt you into their inner circle !!

Nancy used to complain that we didn’t run him enough, and I used to ignore it because hey, I don’t like running when I have to, which is never. In retrospect, I missed out. I should have. There was a time, when we would go for walks along our road, which is a mile long. One day I thought, well hell, I’ll give him a run like she wants. Yep, awesome idea….. For like 1.4 seconds. You see, Jax at full run had a leg span of over 6’ feet. In retrospect, it makes sense. They are not called wolfhounds because of appearance, but rather because they were trained to kill wolves. The breed did such a good job in Ireland that they eradicated wolves in the 18th century. Needless to say, my days of trying to run with Jax crashed and burned rather quickly.

One of the other bright ideas I had was to fence in our backyard, so he could have a large play area. We have a fairly large amount of trees, so I went to the home improvement store and got 5’ high snow fencing. I ran it around the trees and sectioned off what I thought was a decent area for him to roam and play in. Remember those legs? Yep, leaped it like a gazelle.

Ironically, as big as he was, he never knocked anything over, which is quite impressive for a dog that was nearly as long as our kitchen table and who’s face cleared the kitchen island with room to spare. In fact, one of his favorite things to do, while I was sitting at the island, was to stick his head underneath my arm and poke his nose through to see what was going on. He’d also leave the cutest little whisker tracks on the counter-top.

Another thing he loved to do was to spin around, 360 degrees, like a bucking bronco. It always amazed Nancy who couldn’t believe that, despite his size, he maintained such a tight circle.

And Jax loved the ladies. Anyone who came to our home would tell you, once they got over the initial fright of seeing this massive dog and hearing his window rattling bark, was that he would love to rest his face on the center of their chest and get love. No, I didn’t teach him that and apparently Jax was not keen on obeying any social distancing constructs.

One funny story was that Nancy had once been heavily into horse riding / instructing and had an old whip. One day, when Jax wasn’t listening, as he was prone to do, she said, ‘I’m going to get the whip,’ and she did. It has a rigid leather shaft of about five feet and then about four feet of braided leather that dangled. She got that whip and you would have thought she rained down fire. Now, we had no idea why just the mere sight of the whip commanded his instant attention, but it did and it shocked us. I mean we had him since a puppy, so he had never been mistreated, so it just kind of stumped us. But that whip was his kryptonite. If we had company come over and didn’t want him to get in everyone’s face while we were sitting down, we would just rest the whip in the door frame and problem solved. Looking back it was comical to think this dangly little whip kept him out of a room, but he would not cross it; this massive dog, thwarted by thin braided leather.

When we were refurnishing our home a few years back, we got a lovely chair to go in our living room which matched the décor. It was not a cheap chair and that was when we learned Jax also had good taste. One of his favorite things to do was go sit down and look out the window toward the pond. I always wondered what he was thinking. At times he would get a little too comfy and nod off.

Life comes at you fast……….

When you have a dog that big, you learn quickly that ads for dog treats, toys, and beds have a different meaning when it comes to an Irish Wolfhound. I mean, how many other dogs do you know that have their own single mattress? Yet, he always loved curling up on his memory foam bed in the middle.

Doesn’t everyone have a bed ?

And if he wasn’t sitting in his chair, or lying in bed, he’d curl up on the couch to watch me play video games. Apparently it was Jax’s world, we just lived in it.

Couch Comfort Level: Jax tested & approved

Our years with Jax were never boring. No matter where he went, he was the center of attention. Everyone was drawn to him by his size and gentle demeanor and he loved the attention. Friend or stranger, everyone wanted a picture with Jax and he aimed to please.

Jax loved my friend & fellow author, Larry Wilson

Even when he would go to the vet’s office there was never an issue. Jax never needed to be handled; he would simply just stand there majestically and let them do whatever needed to be done. I don’t think I could adequately describe the level of trust he had.

Irish Wolfhounds only have a lifespan of about 6-8 years, so we knew as the years passed what we were going to eventually face. As my puppy’s muzzle began to gray, he became my ‘old man.’ We did all we could to help him, including joint supplements and medications. A few years back he had a minor surgery to biopsy what turned out to be fatty tumors, but he didn’t bounce back easily from the anesthesia. That was something that weighed heavily on our minds going forward.

Last November, our son was walking the dogs, when Jax went down. I’ll never forget the panic as he ran up the backstairs to tell us.  I raced across the frozen ground to get to him. At the time we thought it was just exertion and cold. The vet told us to just monitor him, but he was fine. In February, we were outside and he came running up the hill and I saw it happen. He went down right in front of me. I laid on the ground holding him and Nancy got a blanket to keep him warm. At that moment I thought it was seizures. We got him into the vet and he said his heart wasn’t beating right. After a few phone calls, we were referred to the veterinary teaching hospital at U of I, where they had cardiac specialists. It was then that we learned the horrible news that he had dilated cardiomyopathy, or an enlarged heart, which the breed is known for. The doctors were amazed by his overall health and said with prescriptions and special food we could prolong his life, but they couldn’t say how long. We decided to do everything we could to give him the best chance possible.

And he was doing fine.

Thursday, May 21st, was like any other day. He spent a large part of the day just sitting outside while we were working in the garden. And for dinner he was thrilled when Nancy added some stew meat and carrots to his dinner bowl. Afterwards, we went out for a walk and then stood on the deck. A bumble bee came around and he leaped up to get it. Jax loved to chase after bumblebees. He never caught one (thank God), but he loved the chase. We quickly ushered them in and settled in for the night.

Just after midnight he was whining, and Nancy took him out. They had him on diuretics, so this was fairly common. Then around 1 am, he came over and rested his head on her and she took him out again. After she brought him in, she stayed up. Around 2 am, I heard him gagging and jumped out of bed. It sounded like he was trying to throw up. I got him out the back door, but he was just pacing and gagging. I quickly got dressed and called Nancy who was having coffee. He went down the back stairs and was wandering around. I knew something was seriously wrong. We were trying to get him back to the house when he collapsed. We stayed with him outside until he was able to get back up and we brought him in the house. Nancy began checking symptoms and called the emergency animal hospital in Springfield.

One of Jax’s favorite things to do was to go for car rides. Not exactly an easy thing to do with a dog his size, but fortunately we have a Suburban that accommodates him.

When your vehicle choices factor in all the members of the your family.

I’d open the back and he’d jump right inside, but not this night. I reached down and gently gathered him up in my arms and lifted him into the back. Twenty minutes later we were at the hospital. Once again Jax walked in with the tech, I guess he always knew they were only trying to help. Because of the damn virus, we couldn’t go back with him. I’ll never forget watching him walk into the hospital.

We got a call from the doctor who said he had a twisted stomach and would need surgery. We told her to go ahead and do whatever needed to be done. She said we could go home and pick him up at 7:30 and bring him to our vet for aftercare. We no sooner walked in the door, when we got the call. The damage was too far gone. They wanted to know whether they should sew him up and bring him out of the anesthesia, so that we could come back up and say goodbye, but we couldn’t do that, not to him. Nothing was going to change the outcome, and it was more important for us to let him go peacefully.

Jax had beaten the odds for his bread and passed away on May 22nd, 2020 at the ripe old age of 9 years.

Nothing beats the outdoors !!

There are no words to describe the feelings I have struggled with for the past several days, but suffice to say that my heart is broken. Going to bed at night and not having him come over to have his head rubbed, and then not having him laying in his bed when I wake up, is a constant reminder of the void in our home. There are no rooms in our home without memories of Jax, and this home only feels lonely without him here. His collar hanging on the hall tree, his empty bed at the base of ours, his toys in the basket, the prescription dog food in the closet, the errant clumps of wayward hair that never go away no matter how often you vacuum, the bed I had for him in my office; all constant reminders of our loss.

Can I sleep in your office, Dad ?

Friday we sat here numb, struggling with the fact that he would not be coming home. With tears in my eyes, I asked God for a sign, just to let me know that he was okay. As Nancy and I sat on the back deck, a bumblebee appeared. And for the next half hour that bumblebee hovered over each one of us. There are no flowers out there to attract them and yet this bumblebee came down and moved back and forth between me and Nancy for over a half hour. It’s been a week now, and every time we go out back, the bumblebee reappears and stays by us. At times I have held out my hand and it has flown over to me, hovering near my fingers. We’ve taken to calling him BumbleJax. I’m not sure of your belief system, but for me it was God’s way of letting me know my boy was fine.

In closing, I am reminded of the way Jax would rest his face on my chest and stare up at me with those big brown eyes. In those eyes was an unconditional love that speaks to just how one-sided the human / canine construct is. Our dogs never judge us, they never frown on our shortcomings, and they never not have time for us.  They just want to be with us and that is not asking for much. What I wouldn’t give to be able to lay down next to him on the floor and just tell him I love him one more time, but those opportunities are gone forever. Don’t let a day go by without letting your furry buddy know just how much you care. To that end, let us all strive to be the type of person our dogs thinks we are.

Rest easy, Jax. You are forever loved and will forever be missed. You weren’t just a good boy, Jax, you were the Best Boy!!

A memorial gift from one of Jax’s best friends, Liam. If only love could have saved him,……….