Today marks the one year anniversary of a date that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

It has been one year since the collapse of Champlain Towers South and the deaths of 98 residents within that building.

Among them were my parents.

There are memorials being made during this day, religious services, and general gatherings but I don’t know if I have the emotional strength to attend them.

Since the collapse of the building one year ago, I have ventured near 8777 Collins Avenue only one other time. I went to the Red Cross station at 93rd street, some six blocks north, a couple of days after the collapse to provide DNA samples via a swab. These samples were used to identify my parents’ bodies and truthfully since that time I haven’t had a desire to drive by the site either before or after the rest of the building was knocked down.

Since that day, June 26th, I haven’t passed near that area and, frankly, I don’t want to.

I don’t want to see the now empty land that once housed a building my parents, and I for near a decade, lived in. I don’t want to come face to face with what’s left of two lives I still hold so dearly and can’t believe are gone.

So I sit at home, remembering their smiles and the many times we spent together while trying to understand the unfathomable.

I spent the past year working at our family business and finishing writing my latest novel, which in many ways has been my grief therapy. I finished the actual writing of the novel a week ago and, by an odd coincidence, I strongly suspect the cover will be completed today and I should be able to start the process, on this day of all days, to upload it and perhaps even make it available… at least through Amazon Kindle.

But there will be hours I’ll be sitting around today wondering if I should go and join the other mourners. I don’t know if I have the courage to do so.

Truly, I don’t think I have that courage.

It’s been a very tough year, frankly, and I can honestly say there has been maybe one day where I’ve felt like my old self, a day where I actually felt good.

Today, I’ll have another flood of memories along with the realization of the passage of time. I will once again mourn my losses, as will my family.

But I’ll get through it.

One day at a time.

It’s been a very long nearly one month since last I posted on June 25th, the day after the partial collapse of Champlain Towers South.

A lot has happened since then and forgive me for not providing updates.

It’s been very hectic.

As I mentioned in my previous post, once I had an idea of the nature and extent of the Champlain Towers collapse and realized among the apartments that were part of the collapse was that of my parents, I feared there was little hope for their survival.

On July 2, my father’s body was recovered. On July the 10, my mother’s. Both were identified by a DNA swab I provided. As painful as the news was, at least for my family and I there was closure, which at that time there wasn’t for everyone who lost loved ones to this tragedy.

On Friday, July 16th, we finally had their burial. I was truly touched by those who showed up and had kind things to say about my parents and truly appreciated the company we had following the funeral.

Not only did I lose my parents, though, but also everything they had in their apartment. Family pictures, heirlooms, jewelry, artwork (nothing by anyone famous, but nonetheless some beautiful pictures and one sculpture they had for literally decades), is gone.

Even their cars, which were parked in the underground garage and likely survived the initial collapse as they were under the part of the building that remained standing, could not be brought out. To be very clear: Nor should they have been considered being removed over the far more pressing need to find survivors.

However, once the rest of the building was brought down, the cars were likely crushed as well.

So all their possessions along with them are gone and its so heartbreaking… its as if they not only passed away, but didn’t exist at all.

Perhaps the most infuriating thing to happen from this tragedy is that there are -and there is no kind way of saying this- assholes out there who took advantage and stole the identities of some of the victims…

Hacker steals identities of multiple victims killed in Surfside condo collapse

I hope they’re found and prosecuted to the absolute fullest extent of the law.

So today, nearly a week since the funeral, my sisters and I are going over my parents’ estate and sorting things out. It will be quite a process, likely to take many months and many trips to Estate lawyers and banks, etc., to close out accounts and distribute monies according to my parents wishes.

I feel better today, frankly, than I did in the last posting.

My parents, based on where their bodies were found with respect to the apartment, were likely in bed when the collapse happened, hopefully in a deep sleep.

If this was the case, and given the speed in which the building collapsed, they likely didn’t feel a thing or were even aware of the tragedy as it was happening.

It is my most fervent hope.

I have so many memories of my time with them and will cherish them for the rest of my life.

For those out there reading this, don’t take your loved ones for granted.

Rest in peace, my dearest.

This will be my last post for a while.

How long I cannot say.

As many of you who follow the news know, early Thursday morning came the horrifying news that a condominium building known as Champlain Towers South in Surfside and at 8777 Collins Avenue had a “partial” collapse.

I woke up at about 4 am that Thursday early morning, headed to the bathroom, and saw the news on my iPad.

The shock hit me first. I saw the picture they had on the news website, and I though the building looked familiar.

The shock turned to horror when I read the building that partially collapsed was Champlain Towers South.

I drove off to it, a knot in my stomach, to see what had happened.

My parents, you see, live there.

I lived and grew up there, between 1983 or so until I got married and moved out in 1994.

I called my sister and she talked to my other sister. Eventually, they all showed up at the Red Cross station on 93rd street and Collins. We couldn’t find out parents there and the knot in our stomachs was turning into terror.

When we finally had some idea of what the “partial” collapse involved, the entire north and east wing of the building, the section my parents lived in, that terror grew not the unimaginable.

Losing a parent is gut wrenching. Losing both parents, and all the stuff in the world they had with them, in a matter of seconds, is simply unimaginable.

And I’m trying my best to process that.

Yes, its still early. There might be a miracle and maybe one or both of them are found alive.

But I just… as much as I may wish that to happen, I just don’t see it.

Their apartment was on the ninth floor and faced the Atlantic Ocean. It was the last apartment, one of two, on the Far East side of the section that collapsed.

The view was beautiful, though for someone like me with fear of heights, I found it very difficult to walk the balcony and hadn’t done so in years. The apartment itself was a beautiful one, enough to house all of us -my parents and sisters- when we were living there.

My sisters and I eventually married and moved away but my parents never considered leaving the place, though my mother now and again looked around at real estate listings of homes. It was never a serious thing, more a curiosity, and that memory is even more painful given what happened.

My parents lived comfortably and were well past retirement age, yet my father continued working his business, with the help of my sisters and I.

My mother kept herself busy with her own things, visiting friends and planning to vacation and see her family in Europe after the whole COVID thing was over.

It’s still early and, as I said, a miracle could happen and one or both of them might be found alive.

But looking at the destruction, looking at the fall of the building…

I’m shaking at the thought and find it hard to type through the emotions.

It looks as if I’ve lost not just one but both of my parents to an absolutely indescribable, seemingly impossible event.

And today they say there are 159 others missing from the many other apartments that collapsed on that wing of the building.

My heart goes out to those people.

I feel their pain.

I’ll post again, I promise.

Just give me time to sort this tragedy out.