By Christina Ray Stanton
IN early March 2020, my husband and I were excitedly awaiting the arrival of our nieces to our home in New York City. The girls were spending their spring break with us, which was a graduation present for the eldest, a senior in secondary school. With their mom working overseas for an extended period, I knew the sisters were looking forward to a fun time in NYC as a distraction from the tough absence of their mother. And we were certainly looking forward to hosting these precious girls.
Shortly after their arrival, the city began shutting down in response to the imminent threat of the novel coronavirus. We made the decision to fly the girls home early to get them out of harm’s way, and we decided accompany them. My husband and I had narrowly survived 9/11, and our health has been compromised by the toxic dust we inhaled that day and in the months after. We have what’s known as ‘9-11 lungs’. We’d recently been warned that our ‘pre-existing condition’ would render us less able to manage the virus well if we contracted it. We felt good about leaving the city, and we felt confident in taking a plane. No one felt in the least bit sick, and we’d all been super-careful as we toured Manhattan with gloves and a mask when many were not bothering with those precautions yet. The idea of us contracting the virus seemed very remote.
“Let’s run down to Florida, stay with your brother, spend quality time with the girls, and then make our way back to NYC in a few weeks. I’ll bet things will have blown over in a month or so,” I said to my husband Brian. He agreed, and off the 4 of us went to Central Florida.
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Immediately after landing, I began showing symptoms, such as a temperature, a cough and body aches. Brian, then the girls, and finally my brother-in-law Joe started showing symptoms as well. Only three days after leaving New York City, I began feeling faint when I stood up. Brian took me to the hospital, where I was placed in quarantine and given a COVID test. “You are quite positive,” the nurse announced dramatically. I’d brought my computer to the hospital, and with tears in my eyes, I sent over 100 emails, asking people to pray for our family and to add us to their churches’ prayer lists. I posted our situation on social media and asked people to commit to praying for us there as well. I knew the biggest weapon to fight the virus was the mighty power of prayer. When my second trip to the hospital revealed that the virus wasn’t letting go, I ventured to ask the doctor something I’d been wondering ever since I began showing symptoms, “What are my chances of survival?” He took a breath and spoke frankly. “About 50/50.”
How did I find myself in quarantine in a Florida hospital with a chance of survival of only 50/50? Didn’t we do everything right by leaving the city and protecting our family? Was my life going to come down to a flip of the coin? Heads or tails?
I was now fighting for my life, and it felt eerily familiar. I had been down this road before, almost 19 years earlier on September 11, 2001.
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On that fateful day, my husband, Brian, and I were on the balcony of our 24th floor apartment, six blocks from the World Trade Center. We were standing there, staring at the black smoke and destruction caused by the first plane, when out of nowhere the second plane came roaring overhead and struck Tower 2 just 500 feet above us.
The impact hurled us backwards into our living room and knocked us unconscious. We grabbed our dog and evacuated our building, but not before I could get dressed. Barefoot and still wearing pajamas, we sought safety in nearby Battery Park. But the nightmare continued. The towers soon fell, covering us with toxic dust and debris, and heavy smoke surrounded us in deadly cloud. We eventually managed to board a boat headed to New Jersey, unknowingly participating in the largest sea evacuation in history. We had escaped, but we couldn’t return to our apartment for months. We grappled with unemployment, PTSD, and the terrible pain of losing a friend in the Towers. Additionally, our dog became sick from licking the toxic dust that had covered his fur when the towers fell. He hovered between life and death for weeks.
When Brian and I were in Battery Park when the towers fell, I had asked him if he thought we were going to survive. He replied sadly, “Maybe not,” and grabbed my hands and began praying the Lord’s Prayer. Although I was happy we were together during this awful time, I felt very sad and very alone. It was then I realized that this might be my last moments on earth, and I hadn’t accomplished anything I had set out to do. I wasn’t a Broadway star, I wasn’t wealthy, I didn’t live in Manhattan penthouse….If this is the end of the road, what did it all mean? Even if I had achieved any of those things, they’d have been no help to me now!
Once we survived 9-11, I knew I was ready to explore a deeper meaning of life. I never wanted to feel that alone again.
Urged by a friend, I approached a church that was distributing aid to people who had been affected by the attacks. They helped us with monetary assistance, and we both eventually became members there. When we got back on our feet, my husband and I founded a non-profit that helps the world’s poor, as a way of giving back and “sharing the wealth”, since we’d been shown generosity at our lowest point.
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Nearly 20 years later, I lied in bed in my hospital room and prayed, something I’d been doing throughout each day of my hospital stays. “My COVID-19 survival rate is 50-50,” I thought. There is no 50/50 with you, God. If it’s my time to go, I accept that. Thank you for a wonderful life. Although I was very much alone, unlike in Battery Park, I never felt alone during my illness. I knew God was with me. Having that deeper relationship gave me the courage to navigate the scary days of the virus in a way I could have never done on September 11th.
It took another few weeks of fighting the virus at home, but I did recover along with the rest of the family. On Easter Sunday, the girls and I took a bike ride. I hadn’t been on a bike in a long time and was delighted at how much fun biking was on a beautiful day. As I watched my lovely nieces pedal in front of me, laughing and joyful, I began to cry a torrent of tears as I witnessed this wondrous display of God’s mercy. At the same time, gratitude overwhelmed me when I realized I had weathered this storm with so much more peace in my heart and meaning in my life, as opposed to suffering through the terror of 9-11 when I realized I had neither. And it made all the difference.
The writer is based in the US. For details about her work, visit her website.
