One of Nancy Yambem’s many problems concerns her husband’s clothes. What does she do with a closet full of thousand-dollar suits? Her husband Jupiter was the banquet manager at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop 1 wtc, and had to dress for presidents, princes, rock stars and other celebrity customers. He bought one new suit each year, including a very sharp grey one in which he took a portrait. Nancy holds the frame up, wondering whether her tabletop memorial is too cluttered with photos and albums.

Today she has invited some people over for an Indian lunch and wine at a friend’s place, hosting a memorial service. A few have started trickling into the room, a comfortable lounge at Trump Towers, along the Hudson River. On the floor, her six-year-old son, Santi, is playing with his new Harry Potter lego sets, all three gifts from the arriving guests. "It’s pronounced Shanti," she notes, reflecting the philosophy she and her husband had shared since meeting in college in the early ’80s. Jupiter called his son ‘Chinglailakba’ or dragon tamer. Not someone who fights dragons, she explains, but someone who tames them.

"The paperwork has slowed down," she laments. It has been a year of dealing with bureaucracy and legal hassles, not to mention grief. It took months just to reclaim her car, the one he’d driven to work. Nancy has stopped working at the New York State office of mental health. There’s so much to attend to at their home in Beacon, an hour north of New York City. Mundane tasks, like mowing the lawn and cleaning the gutters, chores that Jupiter always took care of. Nancy also helps coach Santi’s soccer team, another of Jupiter’s role. "He played goalie a couple times," she says, looking at her son. "He stopped some goals."

Nancy is still searching for a necklace her husband had worn since he was a baby. He never took it off, tying it into a knot even when he went swimming. The necklace, she feels, must have been near where his body was discovered. Every month she makes calls to see whether it has been found in the rubble. Fortunately, she has his wedding ring—found on his body—and which now dangles from the necklace she’s wearing.

She and Santi are all set to travel to Jupiter’s home in Manipur, where they would perform some rituals, travel to Darjeeling, where he’d gone to school, and scatter his ashes from his old hiking trail along Tiger Hill.

"But the time has come to move on," she says. "Everybody’s been there for me, but after a few months you’re left to your own devices. I’m tired of the sad faces."