Where You Left Me by Jennifer Gardner Trulson

Gallery Books, 256 pages, $25

Interview by Jennie Szink, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

Eleven years ago, Jennifer Gardner Trulson knew hardly any 30-something widows or widowers. The day after Sept. 11, 2001, it seemed everyone in her life had become one — including herself.

Jennifer’s husband, Doug Gardner, had been working in a tower of the World Trade Center the morning terrorist hijackers took control of two planes, crashing them into each tower. The towers crumbled, killing more than 2,600 people.

“Murdered” in the attacks, Trulson said, was not just her husband, but two members of their wedding party, one of her children’s godparents, and numerous coworkers and friends.

“It was like a personal Holocaust,” Trulson said. “Usually, when someone dies, the community is in your living room. In this case, my community was dead.”

As a lawyer, Trulson dealt with her grief the way that was most comfortable to her: she documented it. She had two children — a son, 5, and a daughter, 2 — and she wanted them to know exactly what it was like the day she found out they would grow up without their father. In the months that followed, one page of writing turned into five, which turned into her recording her voice, until eventually she felt her project had served its purpose. She put everything in a box and stashed it away, not giving thought to it for another eight years.

It was at her son’s Bar Mitzvah in 2009 that she remembered what she had written for her children, and a friend persuaded her to do more with it.

“We were chatting at the synagogue and telling stories about 9/11,” Trulson said. “My stories had an edge to them, and a friend (an author) said you should write this down. I replied, ‘Funny you should say that.’”

Trulson shared her writings with her friend, who passed it on to her agent. A book deal came of it and Trulson set to work on Where You Left Me. She suddenly had to revisit the hardest time in her life.

“I can tell a good story, but I had to put me in it and that was hard,” Trulson said. “To open up my pain, my children’s pain, to go back and revisit it, it was agonizing…But at the same time, I enjoyed it because I got to visit Doug. I got to tell stories and I brought him back.”

And, not everything documented in the book is sad. At one part, readers are introduced to a stranger Trulson meets in a restaurant. Trulson fondly describes the man, an implant from Seattle, as a “tall Viking” she met when he stepped on her foot. The two began platonically seeing each other and though she couldn’t have met him at a worse time, that’s why it worked. Eventually it turned into love.

“He showed me that I couldn’t just slap a smile on my face and still raise my children,” Trulson said. “For them to be everything I could help them be, I needed to feel joy. When I spent time with Derek, I was more present with them. I was a better parent.”

The two have been married for seven years and he’s become her children’s father. However, Doug is still a big part of their lives. Trulson is the founder of the Douglas B. Gardner Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping at-risk children in New York. Doug is also always present in the home.

“He still comes up spontaneously, organically,” Trulson said. “Michael has memories of his father, but Julia does not, so we’ve given her our own.”

All of this is documented in Where You Left Me, a story of a national disaster through one woman’s eyes. It shows how Trulson got by with the support of some of her closest friends, and memories of those who were no longer with her.

The book is about friendship, parenting and getting a second chance at love. It’s about carrying loss with you, Trulson said, and still living a fully present life, so somewhere joy will find you again. It’s a message that seems to resonate with many of her readers, who write to her from all over the country.

“My favorite message was from a 26-year-old who lost her husband in a mining accident,” Trulson said. “She wrote me that this was the only grieving book she read that makes her feel like she isn’t crazy, like what she’s feeling is real.”

The Dayton Jewish Cultural Arts & Book Festival presents Jennifer Gardner Trulson on Thursday, Nov. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Boonshoft CJCE. The event is sponsored by the Brandeis-Joffe Scholarship Fund of the Dayton Jewish Federation Foundation. Free. Call 853-0372 or go to www.jewishdayton.org.