In that brutal time, small acts of human kindness were treasured. They would ask gently how I was doing: did I want a cup of BarryвЂ™s tea? With Splenda, right? They rarely asked who I was writing about they knew who had been identified before I did. Sometimes theyвЂ™d interrupt their own grim work вЂ“ puzzling through GPS data, gruesome photos of bodies, captured radio transmissions, or, more typically, body parts, in an effort to identify the dead вЂ“ to check on me. When the fire marshals working down the hall heard music coming from behind my closed door, they knew another eulogy was being drafted. I came to realize that this soundtrack вЂ“ with its soft, sad opening and final flourish, with its musical tensions between mournful bagpipes and lilting flutes, between forlornness and hope, between despair and resolve, in a word, with its Irishness вЂ“ perfectly matched the emotional thrust and pace of an FDNY funeral oration. The music had been put together and in parts composed by Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains. The smoldering pile of the World Trade CenterвЂ™s towers, where everyone I wrote about had died on the morning of September 11, 2001, almost in an instant, was to my back, out of sight.ДЇor inspiration, I would play a CD of the soundtrack for вЂњA Long Journey Home,вЂќ a documentary on Irish immigration to America. My view was to the northeast, toward BrooklynвЂ™s industrial skyline. I worked late into the night in my eighth-floor office at the FDNY headquarters. I wrote through tears and in mind-numbing exhaustion. Deputy Fire Commissioner Tierney responds to a 4-alarm fire in Queens, NY. I also wrote eulogies for strangers, colleagues in the 16,000-member FDNY who I came to know only through the posthumous process of piecing together poignant fragments of their life stories. I wrote eulogies for close friends and mentors, for senior leaders and legends of the New York City Fire Department. They were in many ways the same, but they were also always different. There came a time in my life, through the autumn of 2001, when I wrote roughly 100 eulogies and edited scores of others.

Be not afraid hymn youtube