Nearly ten years ago I was standing in Pathmark supermarket with a dozen eggs in my hand when I first heard that a plane had flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center — specifically into a group of floors that included the one where my husband worked for Marsh McLennan.

In the weeks and months after the attack, Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind, became the reviled face of our faceless enemies: a devout hero to his admirers and the despised and delusional leader of a vast terrorist network. Because he continued to taunt us with videotapes, he was the perfect vehicle for our anger — and our fear. With nineteen of the twenty highjackers dead, bin Laden was the guy we had to catch.

I’m not sure capturing bin Laden was the 9/11 family members’ highest priority. We had a lot to think about — missing bodies and delayed death certificates and anthrax-laced mail and orange alerts shading into red. When I finally went back to work, I found riding the subway almost unbearable; I was looking for a canister to come tumbling down the stairs, wondering if I needed to wear a face mask when I went to work. Initially, I wasn’t spending a lot of time thinking about the guy in the cave who’d condemned thousands of people to their deaths.

I don’t know if I ever hated bin Laden or thought he was the face of evil. I’m not sure I ever thought of him as an individual. The brand of fanaticism he represented terrified me, of course. And I knew, logically, not emotionally, that he was crazy, dangerous and all-around bad news. Go after bin Laden? Sure, get the guy. Send a message that the United States is not to be f-cked with? I could see the value in that. But wage an all-out war on the entire Muslim population, using his actions and my husband’s name as justification? I didn’t think so.

But most other people pretty much saw the world as the president did: “You’re either for us or against us.” My neighbors, my colleagues, even some friends were filled with righteous anger. They wanted revenge. One woman — my boss, actually — got right up in my face a few weeks after 9/11. “They killed your husband! You of all people should understand why we have to do whatever it takes to get these bastards.” She wasn’t the only one.

I found myself in the awkward position of wishing the CIA were more skilled at conducting quiet assassinations. I hoped (naively as it turned out) that bin Laden’s elimination might prevent a wider conflict. I got tired of his frequent communiqués; his boasts and his threats. I was also sick of media calls asking me how I felt about his latest message. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I wanted him gone.

- – - — – - -

And now he is. And I am asked: What do I feel? I ask myself: What should I feel?

Not joy: I know that. No dancing in the streets or fist-pumping, no celebratory drink. Killing may be necessary, assassination politically expedient but it’s not something I tend to celebrate.

Relief? Yes and no. Perhaps I can be finished with calls asking me how it is to know the mastermind of my husband’s death is still at large. It’s been years since I’ve felt directly threatened by this man, if I ever did. As for what he represents, well, that mindset continues but like most of us who inhabit Planet Earth, I’ve learned to live with it. It no longer defines my life although I suspect it affects some of my choices.

Satisfaction, a sense of justice being served? Perhaps, in a general sort of way, although bin Laden was to me as my husband would have been to him: a symbol; nothing more, nothing less. I certainly wouldn’t have given an egocentric, megalomaniacal personality such as his the satisfaction of taking his rants personally. So in one sense, I meet this story with a shrug.

Of course this news has changed my day. Today is, like so many days over the past decade, all about that event. I’ve been reminded once more of how permanent this 9/11 identity is; how likely it is I will always be asked to return to my feelings about the attack in order to measure both my progress, and, I think, our progress. And how do I feel about that? It is what it is. I’m dealing with it, thank you very much. Maybe I’ll have that drink after all. 

Maslin is careful not to criticize Oates’ grief process but rather takes aim at the lack of emotional meaning or depth in “A Widow’s Story.” Oates’ book is “far less fastidious … flabbier and flightier” than Didion’s work, Maslin asserts, and includes “threadbare metaphysics … much minutiae … and worrisome signs of haste.” She also finds Oates’ selective retelling to be deceptive. For example, the author includes poignant and poignantly funny stories about grieving but fails to go deeply into her 47-year marriage. A far more grievous omission, in Maslin’s view, is the fact that Oates became engaged 11 months after her husband died and is now happily (one hopes) married. “How delicately must we tread around this situation?” Maslin asks. All of this leads her to conclude that Oates may have been seeking to “willfully [tap] into the increasingly lucrative loss-of-spouse market.”

Full stop.

It’s hard for me to distance myself from these memoirs — as a writer or as a widow. My first reaction is almost always a distressing cocktail of anger, despair, envy and confusion.

The writer in me asks: How did there come to be a subset of memoir about spousal loss? How do we rate and rank these books? How do we rate or rank the loss? Are those with greater command of the language or the market share the ones who are most “qualified” to write about this subject? Does it depend on circumstance, or on context? Was my experience with grief and mourning worthy of a share of that “lucrative loss-of-spouse market,” even though I was told way back in 2001 that the story of a middle-aged childless widow was far less compelling than that of a young mother of three whose husband had (also) died in the 9/11 attacks?

The widow in me wonders: How long?

The Oates book and Maslin’s review have generated a fair amount of blogosphere discussion about the grieving process. Author Ruth Conigsberg insisted that “these memoirs are … highly subjective snapshots that don’t teach us much about how we typically grieve, nor more importantly, for how long.” Conigsberg, it should be noted, has her own book concerning the myth of the stages of grief.

She notes optimistically that many older people do recover from losing a spouse to natural causes fairly quickly and even remarry, as did Oates. Her findings are not to be confused with studies that show younger people who lose their spouses in traumatic situations and remain widows or widowers are six times more likely to experience dementia.

Uh-oh.

Nine and a half years after my traumatic loss, I float in a sea of doubt. I don’t even know if I’m still grieving or if something else is at play. Was my marriage at 40 an anomaly, a one-time event? The more time that passes, the more I circle back to “before” — before I met the man I would marry; the years spent in the company of inappropriate, uninterested, noncommittal men while yearning for the comfort of a stable relationship. I spent, will have spent, will spend, more years alone than in a romantic partnership. The marriage, as joyful, as sustained, as relieved and as (foolish me) safe as it made me feel, was a blip on the radar screen of my life, an accident of fate. I float, I coast and I wonder how I can draw any kind of illustrative, instructive or illuminating lessons from the before, the “during” or the after.

The writer in me thinks: Oates is a well-known, well-respected writer and professor at Princeton University. She’s out there. It might have been more, what, helpful to let us know her process included finding happiness again so quickly. Then again, she wasn’t necessarily writing a self-help book, just an accounting.

The widow in me understands: Any memoir I write would be so unresolved as to be thoroughly unsatisfactory, even to me. 

I had a sweet tooth back then (still do) and so would order some dish I couldn’t or wouldn’t finish in order to save room for one of Boder’s delicious desserts. Among the highlights was schaum torte with strawberries.

If you’re from Wisconsin, you’re probably familiar with schaum torte, which is really a meringue shell. Pavlova is one variation. The best part of schaum torte is what you put inside it, like sweetened berries and whipped cream. Well, there’s also the fact that although it has sugar and it has no fat: my kind of dessert.

This year, my sister had some leftover egg whites (who knows why?) and I happened to have the insides of a pumpkin I’d carved. Clever sis got the clever idea of creating a Halloween version of a schaum torte that we could fill with fall fruit compote. Canned pumpkin works just as well and it makes a great alternative or addition to apple or pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.

Don’t be afraid of the vinegar in the recipe; it actually makes the meringue a bit chewier, as opposed to dry and brittle.

Schaum Torte/Meringues

Yield: About a dozen

Unfilled shells may be frozen.