For Tara Bane, the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, is more than a national milestone — it remains a powerful reminder of the husband, best friend and life partner she lost that morning.
Bane’s memoir, “Evolution of a Heart: From the Darkness of 9/11 to Rebuilding a Life and Finding Joy,” released this summer, tells the story behind that loss and the 25-year journey that followed.
Tara and Michael met at Stony Brook University in 1990 and married in July 1997.
“Michael was such a great soul,” Bane said. “He was very compassionate, hard-working. He and I spent all our time together, I mean from the moment we met in college.”
The couple lived in Yardley and loved their home, particularly the garden they worked on together.
On the morning of Sept. 11, Bane said goodbye to Michael at about 6:30 a.m. He typically took the 7:03 a.m. train from Trenton to New York.
Later that morning, Bane was driving through the Oxford Valley Mall parking lot on her way to work when she heard a radio host announce that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center.
“I remember waiting for the elevator, pushing that button to get into my office so I could try to call Michael and anyone else,” she said.
Bane, who is originally from New York, was also trying to reach family members. One of the moments she remembers most clearly came when she finally spoke with her brother-in-law.
“He said, ‘Oh, Tara don't worry, Mike is on a work trip’,” Bane recalled. “And I said he doesn’t leave till the next day. So had it just been one day later, things would have been really different...”
Michael was 33 and worked as a vice president of the casualty claims unit at Marsh McLennan on the 100th floor of the North Tower.
The reality of his death did not immediately sink in. About a week and a half later, Bane went to New York to file a missing person’s report. A few days later, she returned with representatives from Michael’s company, who took the group to Ground Zero.
It was there, looking at the remains of what had once been the towering World Trade Center, that Bane finally understood Michael was not coming home.
In her memoir, Bane describes his death as “the furthest from normal.”
“He was 33 years old,” she said. “I had to find his dental records, with the hope of getting his body or parts of his body returned, which I never have.”
The aftermath brought another kind of pain: the quiet of the home she had shared with Michael.
“I think it was those moments, those days that were so lonely in my home with just my dogs and myself,” Bane said. “I think those were the hardest days.”
For Bane, grief never disappeared. Instead, she learned to live with it.
“Twenty-five years later, I find myself still remembering his smile. I can still see it when I think about him and just the love we had,” she said. “I felt very connected to him. He was my person. He was my best friend. He was my lover. He was everything to me.”
That idea of moving through grief rather than moving on from it is central to the memoir.
“I have a wonderful life right now. I have great people in my life,” Bane, who now resides in New Hope, said. “But Michael is in my thoughts often still, so I’ve just had to figure out how to live with that grief and not have it consume me.”
One of the first glimpses that a future might still be possible came during a May 2002 trip to visit a friend in Hawaii. Bane went skydiving and had experiences that brought her moments of happiness.
“It was during that time away when I said to myself that there’s a life to be had,” she said. “I just had to figure it out.”
Her work as an art therapist also influenced her healing, helping her recognize that many of the emotions she was experiencing were part of the process.
Over the years, she found other tools that helped her rebuild her life, including art, yoga and community. She still practices them today, attending pottery classes at Tyler Park Center for the Arts, painting on her own and practicing yoga several times a week.
“I still use these tools today,” she said. “I make my own art frequently. I go to pottery classes and I paint. I do some watercolors and some oil paint, so I do it on my own and I also use it in my practice.”
She also learned the importance of kindness.
“Life is nice when people are kind and it doesn’t cost you anything to be kind to someone else,” Bane said. “From my experience, it helped me so much when people were kind to me.”
Another important part of her journey was helping create the Garden of Reflection in Lower Makefield, a 9/11 memorial that grew from the efforts of local 9/11 widows and community members.
Bane was involved from the beginning, helping locate land for the memorial and working with the architect. The project gave her a way to channel her grief while giving back to the community that had supported her and Michael.
She has a bench at the memorial bearing Michael’s name beneath a cherry tree. She chose the location because the couple had a cherry tree at their Yardley home.
“I like to go there, and that’s where I’ll sit and look at the fountains and reminisce about our home together and Michael and the life that we had,” she said.
Bane said she hopes readers will find more than her personal story in the memoir.
“I hope that this memoir can help others who experience grief and or trauma,” she said. “I write a lot about the things that helped me heal like finding community, my yoga practice and my art.
As the 25th anniversary approaches, Bane knows Sept. 11 will bring difficult memories. She will speak at the Garden of Reflection that morning, but also plans to find some time alone during the day.
For Bane, remembering Michael is not only about remembering how he died. It is also about remembering how he lived.
“I have my memories with him. I have the experiences that we had together and nothing can take that away from me. The terrorist acts were so devastating, but they did not take that from me, and I hold on to that.”
Bane hopes the anniversary will encourage people to look beyond the numbers and remember the individual lives affected by Sept. 11.
“With this horrible milestone, I want people to remember that this is an event that happened, but there are individuals’ lives that were greatly affected,” she said. “Hold everyone a little tighter that day because life happens and it can change in an instant, as it did for me.”
Tane’s memoir is available in hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon, with an audiobook narrated by Bane scheduled for release this month.
Bane is currently doing book tours and signings. She will be interviewed on the Michael Smerconish radio program on SiriusXM Channel 124 at 11 a.m. Sept. 10. She will also hold a book talk and signing at Newtown Bookshop, 2120 S. Eagle Road, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 17.
MORE: Pennsbury senior uses art and science to make global impact
