THE THINGS WE NO LONGER HAVE

Others are remembering this seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks far more eloquently and vividly than I can. I was a New Yorker, but wasn't in New York at the time.

But here's my modest contribution, the thought of which still chills me. I was at a Hallmark shop a few days later, looking for a sympathy card to send to an acquaintance whose father had died in the attack on the World Trade Center.

The racks were as bare as those for Christmas cards on December 29.

This city -- a city of 8 million people -- was sold out of sympathy cards.

The images we watched on telvision were horrifying and overwhelming. But for some of us the true horror of 9-11 hit home in the tiniest, yet most inconceivable, details.