It's getting worse, not better. There are stages to this sort of thing and I'm finally moving away from shock and towards someplace else. Some place between anger and sadness, around the corner from helplessness. I feel like I should be doing something, but what that something should be, I haven’t figured out yet.

There are co-workers and friends and family to commiserate with, however. Even strangers on the "L" and Metra are talking to each other and to me. Spontaneous conversations about events, personal stories and connections to New York or DC crop up everywhere. In elevators, restaurants, on the streets. From what I gather, we are all in pretty much the same place--finally processing the events and dealing with the inevitable aftermath. I can take some comfort an entire nation understanding exactly how I feel.

Well, an entire nation save three. To address a triviality, there are three people for whom the devastating truth has been withheld for ratings. For a TV show.

CBS has chosen to allow only a small amount of information into the Big Brother 2 compound. It appears they are aware of the attack in the WTC, but not on the Pentagon. It appears they suspect air travel has been curtailed, but don’t know of the ban on all commercial flights across the United States. It appears that they’ve been told Monica’s cousin, who worked in the WTC, is unaccounted for, but they don’t know the magnitude of the situation.

These people are being denied what I’ve been able to experience since the day before yesterday. They’ve been denied the right of comfort. The right to take strength from their families and loved ones. The right to begin the healing process along with the rest of the country.

They will leave that house a few weeks from now stunned and feeling as the nation did on Tuesday. We will all have moved on a little bit by then but they will, for a long time, feel a little off kilter from the rest of us. Perhaps never really escaping that sense of isolation they are experiencing right now.

There are only three of them left. Couldn’t CBS let them go and return later for some other sort of conclusion to the game? Aren’t there creative directors employed at the network to quickly put together a "new ending" to the show? Isn’t the mental health and well-being of these houseguests and their families worth that much?

Shame on CBS.

And I'll add, shame on me too. Shame on me for expending effort on this rather than focusing on the real issue. I should be out volunteering for the Red Cross. Not here, rambling about a TV show.

But, we're all coping in our own way, right? Is there a wrong way?

Addendum: The banner is cancelled.