Exodus Damage

I always end up listening to this song on September 11.

Eight years ago I had flown to Alabama on September 10 to see my grandmother one last time, who was dying of cancer. She was at my mother's house, in my mother's bedroom, in a rented hospital bed. Early in the morning, my grandmother's caretaker, Victorene, came over. She and my mother first straightened my grandmother out in the bed. They pulled her erect, and my grandmother, delirious, began screaming. Next they had to get her unimpacted--they had to get her bowels moving. My mother told me I should step out of the room. I walked to the front of the house. The phone rang. I turned on the TV. And I watched the towers fall as my grandmother screamed in pain.