City Hall Memorial Service - 2 year Anniversary Kleen Energy Explosion

Today marks the tragic February 7, 2010, explosion at the Kleen Energy natural gas powered electric generating plant under construction in Middletown, Connecticut, that killed six workers and injured at least 50 others. After the blast the community rallied together to try and cope with the tragedy, fundraisers for the families of the six who died were held shortly after by a variety of organizations and local unions. Citizens home on that day will never forget where they were or what they were doing when they heard the blast miles away. This past August, the CT legislature passed a bill introduced by representative Matt Lesser calling for fines and stricter controls regarding the flushing of gas lines on construction sites.

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My eyes stung from the cleaning solution as I wiped the window sill in my grandfather's bathroom Sunday morning. In the hall my uncle Joe Salafia, Jr. vacuumed. Then he stopped.

"I can't believe its been 2 years." said Joe. I stopped. My grandmother has only been dead a month; I have no idea what he is talking about. It seems like yesterday. I pick up and wipe under her things still in the bathroom, it seems wrong to put them away, after all they have been in the same spots for at least thirty years. We are a sight, me trying to do my best imitation of domestic goddess, and my uncle - a hulking, rough & tat'd construction worker tries his best to daintily move the vacuum around the narrow hall. He is vacuuming the slate foyer, I know because the sixty year old grout is starting to dislodge and it rattles as its is being picked up. All my relatives have this same blue-red slate flooring. As a child, I used to think if you were Sicilian and wanted to live in Middletown you had to have this slate as some mandatory symbol in order to live here.Maybe it was given out to all our immigrant ancestors as they got off the boat since I've noticed in many other local old homes owned by people of my same background. My parents have it in their basement, and my friends on Catherine Street in theirs, and the apartment my cousin rented on Burr Ave. had it. Now I know it wasn't ever a style trend, but a throw back to when friends and neighbors knew each other better, and helped each other; when you were lucky enough to have had something you could give away you did. Together Joe and I are out of place, going through the motions of what we think we should be doing, both guilty for not helping years before.

"Two years since what?" I ask.

"The Explosion." he says.

" You were on that job weren't you?". I ask.

I know the answer. Joe was working up until six days before the accident. He knew all the men. He had been in the area doing exactly what the men were doing. My uncle is a union sheet metal duct builder and foreman and has been for twenty years. He had been laid off from the job; the reasons irrelevant- typical job site politics and scheduling issues like with any job, routine; but it was upsetting because the pay had been particularly good and he enjoyed the men he worked with. He had been told the job would last at least two or three more years, full time work, that was a huge deal. When it ended for him it I knew it stung hard for him, although Joe never said so. I remember my dad calling me to tell me he was laid off, I was sad, but really didn't know what it felt like to be laid off until a few months later when I was laid off for the first time. You feel like a failure, you ask why me, and you struggle to comprehend how the bills will get paid. He is looking for work again, two years later, and the status unemployment has become too familiar.

"I was supposed to work that day. it could have been me. I could have been gone Just think those guys just got up and went to work to do their job that day." Joe is now looking out the window over my shoulder staring off into the trees outside.

My grandmother potty trained me in this bathroom, my cousins, and my uncle and father before me, an odd thought as I wipe down the sill and wall again. My family, like any other, doesn't always get along. We have epic fights. We come and go in each others lives sometimes like strangers and it makes me sad, but we are all equally to blame, equally as stubborn and argumentative. My cousins and grandmother stopped speaking seven years before this; I used to be embaressed by this fact, but now I know no family is perfect. We all do the best we can. Up until two months before she died, my grandfather still did it all, barely able to stand for long, he insisted on no help, and we were too stubborn to insist otherwise. In trying to figure out how to get some sense of normalcy back we both decided to become an improve cleaning crew of sorts. It will never be as spotless as when my grandmother did it years before, I can hear her in my head telling me all the things I am doing wrong; and my uncle wears steel toe boots to vacuum which is good since I can hear him run his feet over, but its working for us and I am happy.

" I'm glad we can do this together. I'm really glad your here." I said.