Today many special events are being held to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the aborted attack that led to many people dying in a plane crash in Pennsylvania.  It is difficult to believe it has been seven years since the attack, and the world has changed in profound ways since that terrible day.   

While I certainly recall much of what happened seven years ago, including the sight on live television of the second tower being struck by an airplane and subsequently collapsing, I also associate this tragedy with another that occurred the same week.  It was the untimely death of Barbara Silverman, my co-worker for the first four years I was Executive Director at William Penn House in Washington, DC.                                                                                                            

Barbara was one of three people remaining from a staff upheaval at William Penn House prior to my arrival.  My predecessor dismissed the House Manager, and several others either resigned in protest, or also were dismissed.  (This all led to my predecessor's forced departure.)                                                                                                    

Barbara arrived a couple of months earlier to spend a year at WPH as an intern.  Suddenly, she found herself in the role of Interim House Manager. She, another intern, and the custodian were the staff I inherited when I showed up.  It was a certified mess.  Barbara and I worked well together, and she ended up staying four years.  I wished for more, but knew she had larger fish to fry. 

Following some further specialized education at the University of Pennsylvania after she left WPH, Barbara eventually found her niche.  She became the House Manager at the Ronald McDonald House in Washington.  So, she was back in town.  

I spoke to Barbara and saw her from time to time as we kept in loose contact, and I truly felt she was fulfilled in her roles as head resident, counselor, chaplain, manager and everything else she did for the young patients and their families who spent time at the Ronald McDonald House.  And in a shift for her that I never fully understood, Barbara left the Quakers and converted to Catholicism.              

At the end of the week preceding the September 11 attacks I received word that Barbara was in the hospital.  She had a severe reaction to a prescription medicine and was experiencing kidney failure.  I was taken aback when I first saw her at the hospital, as she was very bloated from her condition.                

I checked on her at the hospital just about every day.  Her condition quickly worsened.  As the news of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon filled the television screen in her hospital room, she barely seemed aware of what was happening.  Each day brought new complications and narrowing hope for recovery.  Her elderly father was in town standing by, as were her brother and family.  I spent time with all of them apart from the hospital.  It was a very intense week, and finally the day we dreaded arrived.  Barbara died.               

I hurried to the place where her family was staying.  When Barbara’s father, a tiny, fragile man with a variety of health issues of his own, finally came into the lobby, he slowly walked over to me, sat down, and simply said, “Today we have fresh evidence that life isn’t fair.”           

Afterwards, I went to her room in the intensive care unit and all of the monitors, intravenous tubes and dialysis machines were gone.  I stood looking at Barbara for a moment trying to make sense in my mind of what my eyes were seeing.  She was just two weeks shy of her 41^st birthday, and a medication error took a caring, helping person from the world.