Chad:
Your original blog, and the article to which it linked, make important but somewhat dissimilar points. I have friends and extended family members directly affected by the deaths at the World Trade Center, and money is an issue, but perhaps not quite in the way the article emphasized. If money and monetary awards have made things somehow worse for some familes since 9/11, it is probably because you see family infighting over ‘spoils’ no matter what the cause of a person’s death,?that’s not peculiar to victims of this attack. It also appears that money hasn’t made things better?and that’s no surprise.
Money is at the center of the 9/11 widows’ lives, I believe, because the person who is missing cannot be. Somewhere I think the article makes this point, and it is the key point. Some victim’s families had plenty of money before 9/11, received private settlements from their spouse’s business assets, and just like the families who came suddenly into great wealth, have spent very extravagantly following their personal loss. They clearly have no idea how to make things better, money or not. They remain distraught, disconnected, and to all appearances, quite miserable. The point here is that the money isn’t the problem (it can cause problems), the loss is the problem. Obviously, then, a heap of money isn’t the cure.
