Family Missing a Loved One Finds Good Things to Say

Say good things.

The words had been with me since Sept. 15, when I spotted Dick McCloskey and his family at a park in New York, trying to light a candle in the wind. I asked a question or two about daughter Katie, whose photo was on the flier McCloskey carried in their final moments of hope.

What happened on Sept. 11 did not penetrate a shell I’d constructed until McCloskey, eyes wet, hugged me, a stranger, and uttered his simple prayer.

Say good things.

The entire family is back home now in this suburb of South Bend. Katie’s two sisters, her brother, her parents and grandparents have gathered in the living room of their two-story house. On the wall is a photo of Katie with her siblings. On the kitchen counter is a program from a memorial held for her at a local church, and on the front of it is a quote from her “Big Apple Diary.”

“I thank God that I’m here in New York.”

Katie, 25, had moved there in the spring, struggled a bit, then found a job as a computer technician two months ago. Her office was on the 97th floor of the World Trade Center, and she would call her mother, Anne, to describe the view of the Statue of Liberty.

“Every time the phone rings, I think it’s Katie, because she called all the time,” Anne McCloskey says. “It’s rough. I picture her sitting at her desk. It’s a comfort to me that she probably went instantly. But to think that we have no remains, no body, after 25 years.”

She drops her head; covers her face. “Katie,” she says sweetly, “we’re going to miss you terribly.”

The McCloskey house had been busy through last weekend with family, friends, and well-wishers, but it has grown quiet now. The ceremonial grieving has ended, and everyone in the room fears what comes next--the private retreats into their own hearts.

“It’s getting harder for me now,” says Dick McCloskey. “There’s a lot more time to think.”

Katie’s mother gathers me in with a crushed smile.

“For our enemies, I don’t know how they can live with such hate,” she says.

She and her husband preached tolerance, Anne McCloskey tells me. They told their children to accept grievances, but not grudges, both as family and as citizens of the world. Katie’s boyfriend, Richie Hayes, is black, and the McCloskeys asked him to represent them at Katie’s memorial service.

McCloskey isn’t finished. Out of pure love, she has to say what she’s about to say, because no one else is saying it. With pleading eyes, she says of her daughter’s killers:

“Forgive them.”

The pause seems like an eternity. McCloskey sits fallen, suffocated by grief, wanting no mother anywhere in the world to know her suffering.

“Forgive them,” she says again, “and let them know we care about them. I don’t want war. I don’t want to go kill them.”

Dick McCloskey stirs in his easy chair.

“We have got to get rid of terrorism,” he says firmly. “We can not have it in our society.”

“But there are so many of them,” says his wife of 33 years, crying at the thought of more spilled blood. “And the soldiers, the wives, the husbands. I just want to get along. I just want peace.”

“I think the only way we can have peace is if we have justice,” says Katie’s brother, Noah, 31.

“It’s not a matter of justice,” Dick McCloskey offers. “It’s a matter of preventing it from occurring again.”

Katie’s big sister Leslie, 32, tells her mother she appreciates the humanity of her sentiment. “But if we don’t do something, Mom, it’s like saying it’s OK.”

“And another one in our family might be next,” says Dick McCloskey, who wants no civilians killed in any conflict to come. “You have to rid the world of terrorists. Not Muslims, or anybody else. Just terrorists.”

For all the passion in this exchange, the McCloskeys avoid the news for the most part and keep their thoughts on Katie.

When he implored me in New York to say good things, Dick McCloskey explains, he meant it in different ways.

Say good things about Katie. About all of those who lost their lives. About those trying to make sense of senseless death. About a world that can be so cruel, but full of generosity, as well.

Richie Hayes said good things about Katie at the memorial service. He said Katie was the love of his life, that she lived beyond boundaries, and that she taught him lessons of acceptance.

Katie was the one who made her family laugh; the one whose smile, which hangs on the walls of this house, is the smile of someone who was in on a simple revelation--that life is too short to live it in waiting. She had quit a secure job in Indianapolis and gone to New York on a lark, living her dream.

“I admired that in her,” says her mother.

“If I can learn to live my life like she did . . .” says Leslie, her voice trailing off. She says she takes comfort in knowing that nothing was left unsaid between Katie and her family. They expressed their love for each other in words and deeds.

“Live with peace in your heart, and forgiveness in your heart,” Anne McCloskey says, repeating the thoughts that sustain her now.

In my goodbyes, I come finally to Dick McCloskey, who volunteers at a homeless shelter and believes we are put here, each of us, to take care of someone in need.

Once more, we part with a hug.

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com