Unthinkable Dreams

Yesh Ballon's mother died two days before the 9/11 attacks. Always an iconoclast, even in death, Jean Hymson Ballon found a way to make things more interesting than they had to be. With air travel halted, the rituals for honoring and mourning her death were upended, propelling her family into chaos, conflict, and deeper grief. Unthinkable Dreams: The Year That Mom Died and the Towers Fell is the chronicle of the drama, discoveries, and occasional delights that one family experienced in the month