All last week, I worked on a 9/11 picture and story project on our website, using photos and short essays more than 80 Inland Northwest readers had sent us about visiting the Twin Towers. The stories were, in a sense, remembering the Twin Towers "in happier times" but most of the short essays ended in the sadness people felt watching them come down and the symbolism of all the horror of 9/11.

Thursday afternoon, after working on the project for five straight hours, I experienced an ocular migraine, in which you look up at something and you see 27 of them. I get these maybe every two years, usually from stress. And that night, my shoulders and upper back ached beyond belief.

I blamed the intense computer work but now I am wondering if it wasn't just that. I had been immersed in these stories of life before 9/11, when people happily visited the Twin Towers, and then came the grief we all shared as a nation.

We feel grief in our bodies. I have long known that. But last week, I didn't recognize it in myself.

(AP photo archive)

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