On the eve of the seventh day since the attack, I report with great sadness that we still have not found my friend's husband.

We went home to her, to be with her, but she does not want to speak with us - the NYC contingent. She sees in our eyes the devastation we have seen and the reality that we know and she is not ready for it.

It is, heartbreaking. We are the walking wounded.

I returned today with her mother, to take her through the process so that at least she can gain some insight and ask questions on her mind.

We spoke with police and rescuers. We spoke other families seeking personnel within the same firm. We spoke with the lucky few from his firm who escaped. They shared with us the last moments that they spent with this fleet of vibrant young men.

The general feeling here in NYC is still of hope, but for not for me. I understand the reality and I have come out on the other side.

There is nothing left for me to do.

What's left is about the missing and those who survived them and are left to live. It's their story now, not mine. I will help in the process in any way they want, but my work is done.

I am resuming my life, as difficult as that is, to pick up and go on when so many people I know are missing.

Dealing with a missing person case is so much more difficult than a confirmed death. The possibilities lurk, dancing across the mind, whispering "maybe." I can't say that I wouldn't hear "maybe" either, if it were me.

My parents are heartbroken for our friend, who is as much their daughter as I am. The girl who crashed my father's car before she had a license and my father never told her parents. The teenager that my mother cared for when she had the shingles. The young woman who grew to be my brother's very best friend.

We cannot help her until she wants help, and so we wait for her to ask for help.

I have seen little of the news. I do not follow it. I delete the candle vigil e-mails and the powerpoints and the other bullshit crap people send me about having faith.

I have my life, not faith. I try not think about young men choosing to freefall from 100 stories above ground rather than burn to death. I push away thoughts of passengers on commercial jets who knew for 20 minutes or more that they would be pawns in a suicide mission.

I returned to work and saw people look at me with caution and compassion and empathy. I hear the sympathy in their voices and I shut it out.

I have grieved and I will grieve again some day. For now, I remind myself that I need to focus and celebrate the fact that for some reason I was chosen to remain among the living and I should act accordingly.

Tears are for those who mourn and instead, I celebrate the life of the men who I knew who were so special.

I celebrate my friend, the bartender, who last St. Patrick's day showed up to tend bar in a kilt and cheekily turned to my friend D. and flashed us his bare ass.

I celebrate those I went to college with who were wild and crazy and lived to the fullest extent.

I celebrate my friends who found love before they died and were able to share that before they left.

I celebrate my friend's husband who made her so happy in the last 7 months of their new marriage that she radiated. I am thankful that they had the time together that they did. I am thankful that she is here and young and healthy, with a long life ahead of her.

I remind myself that my friend lived happy 27 years without this man and that someday, she will learn to live many more without him again.

I think it is special, that she was picked to experience that love and to be the one to stay and help his family through this unbearable loss.

I think of all of those women and men, left behind, who now have angels watching out for them.

In life, we can share incredible joy like love and marriage and children. Life is also about weathering tragedy and coming out stronger and wiser.

We in NYC, D.C., and Oklahoma, as well in other parts of the world such as India, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, France and Africa have seen devastation so encompassing it has touched every resident and citizen. It robs us of an innocence but it also opens us up to emotions, unity and strength.

It's okay to cry, but I don't want to spend the time I have doing so. Not right now.

More than ever, I want to live. I want to love and affect people in a way I have never before.

With a week now under our belt, let's begin to live again.

I hope you will join me as I return to the regularly scheduled programming, also known as my life.

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