Just before 9 p.m. on Sept. 9, 2001, my brother Todd called me, as was his custom about twice a month. He had just gotten off the phone with our mother. Mom was always first.

About a month prior, I had driven up from Virginia, where I was stationed with the Navy, to visit Todd in our hometown New York City. We talked about that for a while, vowing that we would see each other again soon.

When we ended our call, Todd had roughly 36 hours to live.

Todd was a bond trader with Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm with offices on the 101^st to the 105^th floors of the north tower of the World Trade Center. When terrorists flew a plane into that building at 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, everyone above the 91^st floor was trapped. That day, Cantor Fitzgerald lost more people than the New York City police or fire departments, both of which suffered devastating losses. The firm lost more people than the Department of Defense, which lost 184 employees when an aircraft deliberately crashed into the Pentagon.

Of the 2,977 souls who were lost that day, 658 were from Cantor Fitzgerald, including my brother. Todd Antione Isaac was 29.

My memories of that day, and of the days and weeks that followed, are hazy and jumbled. I remember spending a lot of time on the phone, but I can’t remember whom I spoke with other than our mother. I remember driving toward New York City a few days after the attacks and seeing, from the freeway in New Jersey, plumes of smoke rising from where the towers used to be. (I once worked there myself, as a security guard.)

I remember making a resolute effort not to cry, publicly nor privately. Crying, to me, meant acknowledging what my soul refused to accept — that my brother, my first friend, was gone.

I remember receiving countless phone calls from local and national media outlets. As a current member of the press, it pains me to admit that I was far less gracious with them than several grieving mothers, fathers and brothers have been with me when I’ve had to make those calls. I was far from my best self in those days, rebuffing well-meaning overtures from friends and neighbors, rejecting any human contact outside of my family.

I retreated so deeply within my own sense of loss that I failed to pay proper attention to other people’s pain, including my mother’s. Our children are not meant to predecease us, and her ordeal — as well as that of thousands of other families — was compounded by not having a body to bury.

We knew Mom hadn’t been well for some time, but the loss of her child seemed to accelerate her illness and she died about 10 months after Sept. 11. I remain convinced, science be damned, that a person can die of a broken heart. I’ve seen it.

In the years following Sept. 11, I began to loathe the anniversary. It remains a national day of remembrance and mourning, and I know it’s a necessary part of the healing process for our country. The worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil is an indelible part of our history, and it must be acknowledged and commemorated. But it’s also the anniversary of the worst day of my life, and I didn’t want to share it with anyone, much less an entire nation. I preferred to do my grieving in private. I still do.

But 25 years have passed, and many of the people I’ve met since then have no idea I ever had a brother, because I seldom talk about him. That seems selfish to me, and anyone who ever knew Todd would tell you he was anything but.

Some of my best memories of Todd revolve around basketball. We grew up in a small apartment in the Bronx, across the street from a basketball court, and we spent most of our free time out on the asphalt regardless of the weather. Our family did not own a snow shovel, so when it snowed, we used a broom to sweep the fluffy white stuff off the court and played on. If there was ice on the court, we’d whack it to pieces with the broom handle.

I remember the day I realized Todd was the better ballplayer. I was 18 and he was 14, home for the summer from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. He was already nearly as tall as I was, and twice as quick. We hadn’t played one-on-one in nearly a year, and he had clearly been improving behind my back.

I never beat him again, but he didn’t lord it over me, as some younger siblings might. That wasn’t his style.

Todd went on to play basketball for College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. A longtime friend was spot on when she said Todd wasn’t the best player on the team, but he was the most fun to watch.

About a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, I drove up to New York City, with a basketball in the trunk of my car, to pick up my brother’s cremains. Once I had them, I drove up to the Bronx, parked across the street from our old apartment building and spent about 30 minutes shooting jumpers, with the urn next to me. Then, as I was driving home, I allowed myself to cry.

I won’t try to make a saint of my brother. He was human, and therefore flawed. But he was the most generous person I’ve ever met, and he had a way of making you feel like the only reason he got up that morning was to see you and spend time with you. It is a rare quality, and one I have often envied.

It’s hard to believe he’s gone. After growing up together, then drifting apart for a time, we were just beginning to truly enjoy each other as adults.

It’s harder still to believe that, in a few short years, he will have been gone for longer than he was ever alive.

I remember being told long ago, in science class, that matter cannot be destroyed. Light a piece of paper on fire, our teacher told us, and let it burn down to ashes. Then scatter those ashes to the winds. You haven’t destroyed the paper; you’ve just changed its form.

After 25 years, I have come to believe that grief is like that. It grows a little smaller, a little less heavy, with each passing year, but it still makes its presence felt from time to time. Every now and then I still reach for the phone to call him — most recently when our beloved New York Knicks won the NBA championship — and realize that I can’t. I hate that my children never got to know their uncle, who would have gleefully spoiled them rotten. I mourn the loss of the children he never had.

But lately I’ve found that I can talk about him without sinking into the dark morass of self-pity that, for years, threatened to drown me and anyone near me. I enjoy talking about Todd — the devoted son, loving brother, merry prankster and staunch friend. The grief is still there, and I suspect it always will be. There’s nothing I can do about that.

What I can do is make an effort to step outside myself and be a little more like him: To be a little more generous, a little more open, a little more willing to give people grace. Including myself.

I can’t think of a better way to honor Todd.

O’Dell Isaac, a New York native and Navy veteran, has been a reporter with The Gazette since 2020.