Glenville man still mourns son he lost at WTC
STAFF WRITER
It was pouring in late August 2001 as Steven Cafiero watched his son walk to his car from the dry warmth of his father's kitchen.
A surprise visit had brought his son -- also named Steven -- to Glenville from New York City, exuberant with news about an insurance job he had just landed. The two men had sat in the backyard until dusk fell, talking about the future.
As Mr. Cafiero watched his son walk away, a terrible feeling -- one he had never felt before -- seized him. "That night, I went out in the rain after him," Mr. Cafiero remembered.
Final contact
A phone call on Sept. 9, recalls Mr. Cafiero, centered around a discussion of the HBO drama, "The Sopranos."
That was the last time Mr. Cafiero would ever hear his son's voice. Two days later, Steven would become a victim of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center.
"Words can't describe the grieving," Mr. Cafiero said, his hands clutching a black-and-white photo of an athletic, handsome young man. "In the past year, my family and I have been going through grief that is so deep that there is no bottom. There is no end."
New job
Steven Cafiero III, 31, had been hired as a client specialist at an insurance brokerage firm located on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center. A proud smile crossed Mr. Cafiero's face as he recalled his son's considerable excitement.
"He took to the job right away," he said. "He was very good at it. He was a very ambitious gentleman -- and he was a gentleman."
Before AON, Steven was a limo driver. He enjoyed telling his father about chauffeuring Shaquille O'Neal, Al Pacino and Harrison Ford, who, according to Mr. Cafiero, "sent Steven birthday cards."
Memories
Mr. Cafiero said of his son: "He lived the kind of life some of us don't get the chance to live in a lifetime. He was starting to go up in the world. So ambitious. I have great memories."
But memories are all he has: Steven was one of the thousands of men and women who disappeared without a trace, lost in the rubble. Although the mayor's office sent Mr. Cafiero a small red urn containing dust and ashes from Ground Zero, a gaping hole remains in his life that he knows may never be filled.
Even though relatives in New York City spoke to Steven at his office the morning of and during the attack, Mr. Cafiero has found it hard to place his son at the epicenter of the violence.
Mr. Cafiero said that Steven's last words, as reported to him by relatives in New York, were uttered just as the second plane crashed into the floors below him: "Oh, my God."
Memorial
Shortly afterward, Mr. Cafiero planted a sapling in his backyard in his son's memory, near the chairs in which he and Steven held their final in-person talk. He returns there periodically to pray and to remember.
"I go at night, and I sit in his chair -- and we talk and I pray. I pray the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be. I say the Pledge of Allegiance. Whenever I see his picture in the morning, I tell him that I love him, that I miss him -- and I tell him to rest in peace."
A singer, songwriter and entertainer, Mr. Cafiero turned to the healing power of words and music after his son's death. He has worked diligently on a poem to chronicle the events of Sept. 11, and the feelings of fear, terror and loss that cascaded across America.
"Every moment that I had spare went into this poem -- when I was at my job, when I was on my breaks, whenever I got a free moment in the stockroom," he said.
A year later
Mr. Cafiero does not welcome the coming of the first anniversary of the attacks or the reminders of the loss that he experiences every day through the media and through the lawyers dealing with survivors' and families' remuneration. His fiancee, Carol Krutz, feels the fatigue brought on by the anniversary, as well.
"It never goes away," she explained. "We're always waiting for a phone call. Maybe they found something. We read about Ground Zero, and they keep asking about what they're going to build. A memorial? A mall? And then there's money and this fund and that fund and the Red Cross. Every day, we're dealing with something. It's a constant reminder."
"End it," said Mr. Cafiero. "End it. It's not helping our grief."
Faith's aid
Mr. Cafiero, a parishioner of St. Margaret of Cortona Church in Rotterdam Junction, turned to his parish family for help after Steven's death, and he remains grateful for their support and understanding.
The church held a memorial Mass for Steven, at which they played a song Mr. Cafiero composed for his son only a few months earlier.
"Our priest, Father Dennis Murphy, gave one of the most moving eulogies I have ever heard," he said. "Father said that 'God didn't judge that day; they all went to heaven.' It's terrible -- that finality of never seeing him again."
Musical comfort
Mr. Cafiero plans to attend the memorial ceremonies at Ground Zero on Sept. 11, where he will receive a rose given by the city in his son's honor. Meanwhile, he will continue to sing and perform for the elderly in nursing homes, for developmentally disabled residents at the local ARC, and for friends and family at weddings.
"He's wonderful" at the nursing homes, Ms. Krutz said. "He sings the old-time songs for them. One by one, he'll sing to them, kiss them, ask their name and tell them how pretty they look. At the ARC, the people want to dance and jump, and he'll sing and pull them around so they're dancing in their wheelchairs."
Even those experiences, however, cannot alleviate the pain left by his son's death. Picking up a copy of his poem, Mr. Cafiero read, brokenly: "This tragic day our eagle stopped flying/joined by the Statue of Liberty crying/September eleventh, two thousand and one/is also the day I lost my own son."