On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, millions of people all over the world are doing what they do every year at this time: recalling where they were on that horrible day, and reliving all of the grief and fear and anger that followed.
For Gina Pinos, the pain is still there, even over two decades later. On September 11, 2001, Pinos was engaged to Firefighter James "Jimmy" Pappageorge, who went to work at FDNY Engine Co. 23 in Midtown Manhattan and never returned. But she was also pregnant with his child — something she never got to tell him before the towers at the World Trade Center fell.
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Pinos had planned to tell her fiancé the happy news that evening.
Speaking with the New York Post, the now-49-year-old mother said she had wanted it to be a surprise and knew that Pappageorge would be thrilled. At the time, the couple lived together in Yonkers, New York, where they were raising Pinos' son from a previous relationship and looking forward to starting a family of their own.
But sadly, that would never come to be.
The pair's love story first took root in the mid-90s, when they met at a gym in Flushing, Queens.
Looking back, Pinos describes it as "whirlwind summer romance" that took them both by surprise. But just a few months in, the pair would ultimately split up, despite their intense feelings for one another.
Pappageorge, who was a personal trainer at the time, "wanted to make something of himself" before settling down, Pinos said, and the two briefly parted ways.
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In the meantime, Pinos tried to get over him by dating, during which she became pregnant with another man's child.
She admitted that the father of her first child "wasn’t the love of my life" and that he was quickly out of the picture, but he did give her her son Justin, who she wouldn't trade for the world.
As it turned out, neither would Pappageorge.
Speaking with the Post, Pinos recalled how her former flame came knocking on her door one day, dressed in his EMT uniform and looking to get her back.
"You’re the one for me," he told her. "I’m going to take care of you and [the baby] for the rest of my life."
"Our love was undeniable," said Pinos — and from that day forward, they were inseparable.
Pappageorge was there for Pinos throughout her pregnancy and held her hand in the delivery room as she gave birth to her son.
According to the mother, Pappageorge treated Justin as though he were his own and never thought of him as anything other than his son. (In fact, so many friends and coworkers believed the 5-year-old was that they were surprised to learn the truth at Jimmy's wake.)
In the years that followed, Pappageorge worked his way up the ladder. After joining the FDNY's EMS division in 1996, he became a paramedic in 1999 and finally felt like he was making a difference.
"He loved helping people," said Pinos, "and he loved medicine."
Eventually, Pappageorge took the test to become a firefighter, and according to Pinos, he did it for one reason.
"He wanted to have more time for his family," she recalled. "We wanted to have another child."
And so, on July 23, 2001 – fewer than two months before the attacks on 9/11 — Pappageorge graduated from the Fire Academy and officially became a firefighter.
On the morning of his death, the 29-year-old headed into Manhattan for what he thought was a regular shift.
But soon after the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, everything changed.
Pinos immediately called Jimmy at the firehouse, where she could already sense the mounting chaos in the background.
"I could hear the emotion in the firehouse," the mother shared. "I heard the alarms."
Just like every other FDNY company in Manhattan that day, Pappageorge's was being called to the World Trade Center — a site that would later be called Ground Zero for what would take place.
"Gotta go, they’ll leave without me," he said as he cut their call short. But just before he hung up, he told her, "I love you."
Those three little words have stayed with Pinos for two decades.
They carried her through the shocking news of his death, after the towers fell, and his heartbreaking funeral.
But the regret that still fills her heart is that she never got to tell him she was pregnant with their child — which for Pappageorge would have been a dream fulfilled.
"I never got to say it," Pinos recently shared. "I don’t know if that would have made a difference. I always carry it with me."
It's a regret that somehow cuts even deeper, considering what followed.
While still absorbing the pain of losing him, Pinos suffered another tragedy just weeks later when she miscarried. In the end, she would never get to see the child who would have been Pappageorge's, which was like a second death.
"The grief, the agony, not sleeping, crying all the time because he wasn’t found right away — my body didn’t react well," she shared.
In the years that followed, Pinos slowly began to heal.
After growing close to one of Pappageorge's firefighter friends, whom he met while training in the academy, Pinos got married and went on to have two more sons, Liam and Stephen.
Looking back, though, she said their relationship was defined most by a shared sense of grief, and after just four years of marriage, the couple divorced.
“The firefighters were going through pain as well, from losing so many people on the job, and the guilt of surviving,” she told the New York Post. “We were brought together under the wrong circumstances.”
For the New York mom of three, the tragedy of 9/11 will always haunt her.
But finally, after two decades of grief and recovery, she said she's finally beginning to see a hopeful path forward.
"I have never fallen in love again after Jimmy," she admitted. But now, after recently meeting someone new, she feels she is finally "open to the possibility of love again" — as well as the closure that might bring.
