Reign Over Me - 9/11 Loss Of Family

[Charlie Fineman]
I had three daughters....Geena was five. Jenny was seven, she, uh, she liked boys already. Julie was 9, she was, she was older. They all looked alike, Johnson, like Doreen. Doreen was my wife. DT. That was her nickname: Doreen Timpleman. She had a dog, Spider. Spider, the poodle. They'd wake me up all the time, Saturday mornings, you know, singin' Beatles songs to me in harmony, the four of 'em. So cute, so cute. Doreen never never judged me, ya know, never nagged like, like some wives do. Just wanted me to take my shoes off so I didn't wreck the carpet. That's it. Doreen and the girls were very female. I- I-I was the oddball, ya know. Mr. Man. They adored me, Johnson...

With the long brown hair, except little Geena. She kept her hair short, you know, to be different from everybody. She, uh, she had a birthmark, though. Looked like a burn, but it wasn't. She always said it was gonna go away, but it never did. Jenny, Jenny, this one, she wanted to be a gymnast. She was such a klutz, though. I didn't have the heart to mention it as a problem. (crying) They, uh, went to see Doreen's sister Ellen and her girls in Boston, and they took Spider because I had to work and they didn't trust me to feed her, but that was a joke, right? And then, uh, we were all goin' to DT's little cousin's wedding in Los Angeles, and I was gonna meet 'em out there. The kids wanted to go to, uh, Disneyland, but they had, uh, they all were gonna miss a couple of days of school, so we had to say no, you know.

So I'm goin' out to, uh, meet 'em in Los Angeles, and on my way to JFK, I'm in the taxicab and I hear on the radio - I get there and some man tells me the plane's from Boston... (crying) some other guy says there's two planes. (sobbing) Then I go inside the airport and I'm watchin', I'm watchin' on the television, and I-and I-I-I saw it. I saw it and I felt it at the same time. I thought about Geena's birthmark, and I-I felt them burning...Can we go? I want to go home now.