The pain can still ambush them at an unexpected moment, the love for those taken is ever strong, but life has gone on.
For many who lost family in the 9/11 attacks, continuing after a terrible loss is a work in progress — particularly as their grief gets dragged into the global spotlight every September — but it's one devoid of self pity.
Rather than letting their love for those killed hold them back, they've spent the last decade distilling the positives from the pain and finding new strength in the process.
Loretta Filipov's husband Alexander was on American Airlines Flight 11 when it hit the World Trade Center. Ten years later, she's hoping people will focus on his life, rather than the tragedy of his death.
“I'm not going to go stand in public and cry; I'm not going to say, ‘Oh, poor me,“’ the 74-year-old Ms. Filipov said in an interview. “My life changed and it will never be the same. But I'm moving forward every day.”
Alexander Filipov was an electrical engineer who grew up in Canada and became a U.S. citizen in the 1960s. The 70-year-old father of three had been living with his wife in Concord, Mass., for 44 years when he was killed just days before their wedding anniversary.
“I thought my world was over,” his wife said of the first few days following the tragedy.
“But after the shock and the awe of it all, we decided two things: we weren't going to be afraid of anything and we certainly didn't want a war to start and kill more people.”
Ms. Filipov established the Al Filipov Peace and Justice Forum in her husband's memory, held around the 9/11 anniversary every year, and later joined September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization advocating non-violence.
“They were all my best friends that I never wanted to know,” she said of those she met. “You could go through life being angry and revengeful or you could do something good, and I chose the latter.”
Ten years on, Ms. Filipov wants people to know she's just like any other widow.
“When you lose a loved one, the pain is the same, no matter when or who — the only difference was that ours was very public,” she said. “I don't want to be a victim anymore.”
Abigail Carter understands. She's spent the last few years convincing people she's made peace with the loss of her husband.
“When you have a loss that happens really close to you it sort of awakens you, you sort of lose your fear of death a little bit,” said the 45-year-old widow.
“You kind of have a renewed appreciation of life.”
Ms. Carter's husband Arron Dack, a 39-year-old father of two, was attending a conference at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. He called his wife after the first plane hit the tower he was in.
“He said a bomb had gone off,” said Ms.Carter, who lived in New Jersey at the time. Mr. Dack, who was on the 105th floor, told her to call 911, which she did. Minutes later, an officer told her a plane hit the building.
“I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit the second building and that was pretty dramatic.”
Ms. Carter remembers initially going into “calm mode,” asking for children's books on grief just hours after the towers fell. That calm then gave way to total numbness.
“It was like I was watching my own life through a pair of goggles,” she said, describing her world at the time as devoid of colour. “It was like I was an automaton.”
After eight months, Ms. Carter's numbness was replaced with panic over the arrival of summer — a period that brings back memories from when her husband was alive. She still wrestles with that panic, although she's far more adept at handling it.
“You're trying to keep yourself so busy so you don't have to think about what's not there,” she said. “That freneticism, I have to work really hard, even still, to keep that at bay.”
