Tragedy tears at a family's bonds

Second of three parts.

Five years ago today, Dottie Grodberg lost her daughter Lisa when her plane slammed into the World Trade Center. Two weeks after that, she lost the rest of her family.

It was a brisk fall day and Grodberg, 72, had stopped in to visit with her daughter's two children, ages 3 and 6, a little playtime she hoped would distract them, as well as herself, from their grief. When she got to their Needham home and found it empty she punched the security code at the door, as she always did, and sat down inside to wait. Moments later, her son-in law walked into the room and fixed her with a cool stare.

``How did you get in here?" asked David Gordenstein.

``I used the code, like always," shrugged Grodberg.

``Yeah? Well, not anymore. Things are different now," said Gordenstein, as they both remember it.

Grodberg hurried outside and burst into tears. But Gordenstein, who had long chafed at his mother-in-law's unfettered access to his home, even as he loved her, did not follow. In time, he would set even stricter limits, requiring Dottie, on some visits, to meet the children, Carly and Samantha, at the curb.

``I'd never liked her coming in like that anyway and now it was time to say something," Gordenstein recalled. ``Lisa was not here and Dottie was not going to come bopping into my house like that."

And so began life without Lisa, a life in which an unthinkable and very public loss not only upended the family's structure but magnified long-simmering issues. Borders and bonds were abruptly recast. With her impish smile and ebullient ways, Lisa had been an emotional anchor, a centering presence, in ways they hadn't fully grasped until she was gone.

Some in the family clung desperately to the way things had been before that brilliant September morning. Others found security by living into the change thrust upon them. The tension between those two ways was inevitable, and, at times, unbearable. For them, as for many of the families of the 92 Massachusetts residents who perished that day, the last five years have been, at times, an excruciating passage.

But in recent months, the Grodbergs and Gordensteins have found a different and more comfortable place, learning to be the family they know Lisa would have wanted them to be.

Dottie and other family members are again welcome in the house. What was once Lisa's family -- a unit that gained several new members after David's remarriage in 2004 -- will celebrate Thanksgiving together. Today the children will stay home from school and all will come together at Lisa's graveside in Sharon Memorial Park. But while everyone is relieved that the bad days seem largely behind them, they are also treading with care.

``I think we are all finding our rhythm," said David, 47, president of Zeff Photo Supply in Belmont. ``But it will surely take many recalibrations in the years to come."

Of all the photographs of Lisa Gordenstein, there is one that stands out. It is a stunning black-and-white image of Lisa and her young family sitting on the beach in Falmouth one year before she died at age 41. She and David sit side by side, their small daughters in their laps flashing gap-toothed smiles. They are all wearing brilliant white shirts that bounce the summer sun onto the wispy dune grasses behind them.

You can see the mischievousness in her eyes, twinkling under her short crop of dark blond hair. This was a woman who liked to play, who performed a drop-dead imitation of Barbra Streisand and did not hesitate to lean over and fork a mouthful of a friend's meal. A perennial optimist, she had a term of endearment for everyone. David was ``Chez," her mother was ``Princy" and her sister was ``Da." She made her girls chocolate chip pancakes and may have enjoyed trips to Chuck E. Cheese together slightly more than they did. She liked the phone and talked to her mother almost every day.

She also liked to work. Lisa was an assistant vice president at TJX Cos. A graduate of Brookline High School, she had worked in the clothing industry for nearly two decades. But even as she developed her career and depended on the nanny, Lisa had her girls at the forefront of her mind. Rare was the trip from which she did not return with a pair of heart-shaped cookies.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Lisa and six other TJX employees boarded American Airlines Flight 11 en route to California. Before she left home that morning at 5 , Lisa woke her girls to say goodbye. And as she sat on the runway, she made a final call to her husband with a reminder about the girls. The next time his phone rang it was a colleague of Lisa's calling to say that her plane had struck the World Trade Center.

``I screamed," recalled David, tears streaming down his face. ``I just screamed."

In the beginning, David grappled with his emotional turmoil, and with the daily routine. Sam , now a long-legged 11-year-old with a mane of her mother's blond hair, remembers that meals at home were generally burnt, except for those cooked on the grill.

``It was crazy at first 'cause my dad didn't know what he was doing," said Sam. ``Once I had a knot in my hair and he had to call a baby-sitter to get it out."

For David, the situation fast became overwhelming. In addition to losing his wife, he had also lost his father the previous year, and in the weeks after Lisa's death he was adrift. While he was keenly sensitive to Dottie's loss -- he often says that losing a child is the greatest loss of all -- he also felt it important that his daughters know that life would not stop. And so in the coming months he would take a number of practical steps intended to keep the family afloat.

``David is the type of guy who keeps on going," said Debbie Booras, 38, his second wife. ``He would often say, `I have to keep moving for the girls.' "

And so it was that tensions between David and Dottie quickly came to a head. During the 15 years of Lisa and David's marriage, the two had gotten along reasonably well because they were genuinely fond of each other. But Lisa was the one who dealt with her mother's frequent visits and phone calls. David and Lisa had often discussed limiting Dottie's access to their home, according to David, but somehow it never happened.

Now, Lisa was not there. And Dottie, already an anxious person, by her own assessment, was profoundly more so. How could it be that she had lost her baby, the youngest of her two daughters? At times she was beside herself with worry, nervous about the world, about going downstairs, and, Lord knows, about her blessed granddaughters. While she has been seeing a psychiatrist since shortly after Lisa died, Dottie says, ``I didn't really come to until a year and a half ago."

After their clash over the security code, there came the matter of Lisa's clothes. One month after her death, David placed many of her clothes on racks in the garage so that her family and close friends could help themselves. It was an act that stemmed from his practical self, but also was meant to assert some sense of control over the chaos. Things had to move on.

To Lisa's family, it was inexplicable.

``It was very upsetting to see her clothes out like that," said Dottie. ``Every now and then I thought, `Why is David doing this to me? To make me crazy? To torture me?' "

Dottie, too, wanted some of Lisa's clothes, mementoes of their love. One day, when David was not home, she took some of her daughter's scarves from a drawer and some other items from garbage bags that David had filled with her things. When he learned about it, David was furious.

``He said, `You are not allowed,' " recalled Dottie. ``He said, `This is like stealing. You need to ask.' "

As David recalls it, ``I felt completely invaded. I did not want her in the house when I was not there."

The far larger concern for everyone was the girls. In her last conversation with her mother on the night before she died, Lisa had asked Dottie to give her girls ``plenty of hugs and kisses." Dottie intended to do far more than that.

``David and my husband have both told me to remember that these are not my children," said Dottie. ``But they are all I have left of Lisa."

As Dottie's husband, Bob Grodberg put it, Lisa's death ``was the most powerful trauma of her life. She was emotionally out of kilter for a long while. The most important thing for her was to keep in touch with her granddaughters. . . . She was going to be the girls' mother and that's the way it was."

Dottie became even more involved in her granddaughters' lives than she had been before. She called the house almost daily. She took the girls on outings and had them to her home in Jamaica Plain, as did her other daughter, Debby Fenn. David continued to employ a nanny to care for the girls while he was at work, and Dottie dropped in several times a week to lend a hand. And if she did not feel the nanny was doing a good job, she let David know.

``The first nanny he hired was horrible," recalled Dottie. ``Just dirty and messy. I went to David immediately and I said, `Where was your head when you hired her? She has to go.' "

There were other things that Dottie was concerned about. The girls were not eating right. They should be taking piano lessons. They should be using the camp scholarships offered them. Over the years, Dottie and Bob have backed off on many of those issues. But not about camp.

``We have, it is fair to say, badgered him about camp," said Bob, an attorney. ``We feel in some ways the girls are being deprived."

By early 2002, several months after his wife died, David was lonely. And he had someone in mind. Her name was Debbie Booras, an account executive for 96.9 FM-Talk and the single mother of two boys. He had met her when she cold-called him to sell an ad the previous year. But before he asked her out on a date, he talked to Dottie.

``I wanted her to hear it from me," said David. ``I wanted to be respectful."

One of the next to hear was Lisa's sister, Debby Fenn. Debby, who had long been close to David, was pleased at the news, according to several accounts. (Debby declined to be interviewed.) Dottie, however, was less thrilled. For her, the issue cut to the core. A single child herself, she had a very small family. Both she and Debby had seen their first husbands die. With Lisa now gone, they were deeply worried about what sort of family they had left.

``I was very nervous about whom he would marry," sighed Dottie. ``Would she be nice to the girls?"

Some friends and family members were shocked at David's decision to date so soon. David knew the subject was sensitive but, the fact was, he explained, ``I was lonely. I wanted someone to talk to."

``It seemed awfully fast to a lot of people," said Patricia Feldman, a close friend of Lisa's. ``It raised some real questions."

Debbie and David hit it off immediately. When Debbie, then 34, first met Carly and Sam in March, she gave them each a silver locket in which they could place a picture of Lisa.

``I didn't want them seeing this female coming in as some wicked woman taking Daddy," said Debbie. ``I wanted to acknowledge Lisa in a very real way."

In time, the girls took to Debbie. They also liked her sons, Nick and Dan, who were only slightly older. Sometimes the boys and Sam discussed ways the passengers on Flight 11 might have avoided disaster. Dan wondered: Couldn't everyone have jumped off the plane? Sam did not think so.

Both girls have been in therapy, but do not talk a great deal about their mother. Carly, 8, was only 3 when her mother died -- she has lived longer without her than with her. Carly's favorite story about her mother is of her chasing a movie star out of a restaurant for an autograph -- an incident described to her by her father.

But Sam knew her mother well. In the months after her death, she took on the role of Carly's mom, helping her to dress and fixing her hair. Sometimes she pulls out pictures of herself with her mother and recalls the moment portrayed. But she is a soft-spoken, private girl. By the time the two families moved in together, she was ready for a large, boisterous family. The family has taken two cruises dedicated to 9/11 families, and the girls know other children who lost parents that day.

On the anniversary of 9/11 the family's practice has varied, but they just about always visit the tree in Needham's Memorial Park Garden that was planted as a memorial to three residents who died on 9/11. The girls call it ``the Mommy tree." Their stepbrothers go out of their way to be nice to them on that day.

``They play lots of games with us," exclaimed Carly.

In the summer after Lisa's death, David and the girls began having regular Sunday dinners at Debbie's Plymouth home. But every weekend, just as they sat down, it seemed the phone would ring. It was Dottie.

``It got so we just stopped answering the phone," said Debbie. ``We'd call her back after we ate."

That fall, Debbie and David made a plan to go to a local fair. But before they left, they got a phone call from Lisa's sister Debby.

``She was crying and very upset that we had not invited her," said David. ``You'd think someone had died again."

Like her mother, Debby had experienced several losses in recent years. She too, according to several family members, found herself deeply anxious about family after Lisa died.

David was sympathetic to Dottie and Debby's grief: He took flowers to Debby's home that afternoon. But he also wanted to get on with his life. When Dottie suggested the family enter group therapy, David agreed. But he didn't last long.

``I assured them in therapy that they would always have me in their family," said David. ``But I needed some space for me. I mean, don't I have some rights here?"

Over the course of 2003, David and Debbie began to create the space they needed. They began to see less of Dottie and Debby and of some of Lisa's close friends. That summer they bought a house with enough room for all seven of them, including Debbie's mother, Lillian Booras, known as ``Munga," a nickname blending ``Mom" and ``Grandma" that was coined by Nick. She would help care for the children and their four dogs.

But before David proposed, he talked to the girls. ``He asked us if it was OK, and we said sure," recalled Sam.

To some of Lisa's intimates -- now feeling outside David's blossoming new world -- it was a painful time.

``We were desperate to be closer to Lisa's spirit, but he wouldn't let us in," said Patricia, Lisa's friend. ``Debby and I felt very betrayed."

As Dottie saw it, ``David just completely turned on us. I really don't know why."

In January 2004, David and Debbie got married at the Ballroom Veronique in Brookline. The four children attended, the girls dressed in a scarlet tartan and black velvet. Dottie and Debby and their husbands attended, as did a dozen of Lisa's friends. More than a few grew teary at the memory of the funny, loving friend whom they sorely missed.

The trouble began shortly afterward . For Dottie, the wedding had been hard. When she talked to Debbie after her honeymoon, Dottie remarked, ``I had to get drunk to get through that wedding," according to Debbie and Munga. Dottie recalls saying simply that the event had been difficult for her.

Munga was enraged. For months she'd been irked at Dottie's running commentary about how the children were being cared for. But this she would not take silently.

The next time she saw Dottie, Munga exclaimed, ``This was not about 9/11, and this is not about Lisa's death," recalled Munga, 59. ``I said this was about Debbie and David. If she felt that way, she should not have come to the wedding."

Tension flared between the grandmothers again several months later. As they left a school function together in the late spring, Dottie suggested that she take the girls home while Munga took the boys for a haircut. She asked Munga for the security code. As she had been advised by David and Debbie, Munga said no. Dottie would have to wait for someone to be in the house.

``She was horrified," Munga recalled. ``She was like, `Who are you? I have been in their lives forever. You have been in their lives for a cup of coffee.' And you know what? She was right. But that was the rule. I felt sad for her."

David and Debbie, then pregnant, decided that it was time to set clear limits on Dottie's access to the home, as their family therapist had advised them to do. The children would be met outside the house. Debby was also kept at arm's length.

``I was ready to snap," Debbie said. ``I was profoundly sorry for what happened to Lisa, but I didn't do it."

The restriction lasted less than a year. In December 2004, Debbie gave birth to a girl. She named her Lily with Lisa and the binding of the two families in mind: Debbie's mother and Lisa's grandmother were both named Lillian. The name also had the same number of letters as Lisa's name. And in a way, Debbie considered Lisa to be Lily's mother as much as herself.

``If Lisa had not died, I would not have had Lily," said Debbie. ``She is as much responsible for her life as I am."

The separation was not long, but it had a seismic impact. Early last year, Dottie was invited to see the baby and gradually resumed her weekly visits to the house. Munga apologized for speaking to her angrily, and the two women began talking ``in a way we never had before," said Munga.

Debby took longer to come back. But gradually, she resumed her visits. Although Debby and Dottie still call frequently, the extended family has begun to settle into a routine that seems comfortable to everyone. Dottie worries less about the girls: ``I can see they are well taken care of," she said.

In the large yellow house, ``Debbie has staked out her territory," David said. ``The tension is starting to subside."

On Sept. 11 last year, the family came together at Lisa's graveside. After she asked for Dottie's permission, Debbie began to speak to Lisa, as all five children listened. She said that there was a new baby girl who had been named after Lisa, and ``I told her how beautiful her own girls were," recalled Debbie.

Everyone then left but Dottie, who stayed alone for several minutes.

Today, the plan will change a bit. The family will again go to the gravesite and later out for lunch. But afterward, Sam will not stay with the family as she has in years past: This year she wants to go back to school to participate in a cheerleading clinic.

There is a shift as well in the way family members have come to talk to one another. A few weeks ago Dottie and David were talking on the telephone . And when David hung up, he used a term that made Dottie start.

``He said, `Bye, Mummy,' " recalled Dottie. ``I haven't heard him say that in a long time."

Tomorrow: Tracking the changing mission in Afghanistan in a story, photos and on-line narrative report.