Stay with us yet a little while,
We know as well as you your pain.
Walk with us just another mile,
And then, another mile again.
David Egan and his wife, Elizabeth, raised three children. Their son, Brendan, was their only boy. Long before he grew up to be a United States Marine, he served as the bridge between his sister Lisa, two years older than he, and his sister Samantha, five years his junior. The seven-year-gap in age between the Sisters Egan did not affect the closeness of their relationship. Speaking to the New York Post about her daughters on the second anniverary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Elizabeth said, "Lisa was one of those little girls who always wanted a baby sister, and when she got one, that was it. And Samantha always looked up to her."
Lisa Egan graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University, playing on the women's basketball team as an undergrad and earning her MBA in business administration before her career took her to Cantor Fitzgerald in 1997, where she worked on the 104th floor of One World Trade Center as a Human Resources Administrator. In mid-2001, she scored her little sister, Samantha, a job at Cantor Fitzgerald too, as a Personal Assistant in the Finance Department. Samantha worked near big sister, Lisa, on the North Tower's 104 floor.
In a horrible, unimaginable blink of an eye on a Tuesday morning twenty years ago, these two wonderful young women, who had been joined metaphorically at the hip since Samantha's birth not quite a quarter-century earlier, were murdered by the cowards who hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and weaponized it by flying it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 am, impacting the building between its 93rd and its 99th floors.
Their father, David, believes that his daughters spent their final moments as they had spent so many moments, together, taking comfort in and drawing strength from one another. "They would have been seeking one another immediately. It would have been the first thing in their minds. I know they are together."
Samantha Egan and Lisa Egan
On what tragically turned out to be the final Mother's Day Lisa and Samantha celebrated with Elizabeth, the sisters gave their mom a gift on which they had collaborated: a photo album of their moments together. In an effort to apply salve to the impossible-to-heal wound to his heart that the brutal murder of both his daughters, David Egan began writing a collection of poetry, which collection included "The Offering", a portion of which is excerpted at the top of this essay. As they should, the final words of this piece belong also to David Egan...
I cannot tell you when the darkness lifts
Nor when the burden that does press
Upon your heart shall find relief.
Nor can I tell you when the grief
Which fills your every waking hour
Shall pass itself unto a higher power.
So if you can but spare yourself a while,
Come sit with me or walk with me a mile.
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