Life goes on: surviving partners of victims of the terrorist attacks take different approaches to the same goal--getting on with their lives. (Survivors).

Today, it seems like an omen that Jeffrey Collman woke up at 2 A.M. on September 11 and called his partner of 11 years, Keith Bradkowski, to tell him that he loved him. The sentiment was hardly out of the ordinary, but the sound sleeper's restlessness was.

Collman couldn't have known that just six hours later, he, the only male flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, would die suddenly when his plane became the fiery beginning of a national nightmare.

He also couldn't have known how his death and the deaths of so many others would, months later, leave thousands of their survivors struggling to put their lives back together.

The process has been slow for many--most surviving partners couldn't confirm their loved ones' deaths for weeks, and few know where their bodies are. But for gay and lesbian survivors, it has been especially difficult. Amid the waves of emotion, money is the universal undercurrent in death, as it often is in life. And members of same-sex couples usually aren't entitled to all of the benefits that will help them pay their debts and plan for their futures.

Just as gay and lesbian survivors' experiences have varied from the worst (greed and insensitivity) to the best (astonishing kindness and inner strength), so have their attempts at coping. Some have chosen to fight for their rights. Others are following their dreams. And one simply painted his apartment walls.

Bradkowski, 45, has struggled to grieve--and forgive--every day since the 41-year-old Collman died.

"I immediately went into denial mode," says Bradkowski, a registered nurse from Novato, Calif. "It was a little over an hour [after the crash] when American Airlines called to officially notify me. Four weeks went by, and I didn't know [what] day it was."

Bradkowski says it was only a few days after the crash that Collman's stepmother asked him when she might be receiving her stepson's death benefits and final paycheck. He says she later asked him not to mention their personal relationship when he eulogized Collman at a memorial she organized. He agreed.

It wasn't until Bradkowski learned that American Airlines had issued a $25,000 check to the family of each person who died on its planes--and that Collman's had been split between his parents--that he'd had enough.

Even though he was Collman's emergency contact, his registered domestic partner in the state of California, and the beneficiary of his life insurance policy, Bradkowski says he has not been recognized as his survivor.

"I kept asking American [Airlines] about this benefit, and finally I got to a high enough level to get an answer and asked again, `How do I fit into this? We're registered domestic partners,'" he recalls. "The good old boy in Dallas said, `It's irrelevant.'

"It's been a real tragedy losing Jeff," adds Bradkowski, who is now suing the airline, with help from Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. "But the second-greatest tragedy is having to constantly defend our relationship to his family, his ex-employer, and our governor. I've been so busy, only now am I starting to grieve."

Peggy Neff counts herself lucky by comparison.

Depending on who was within earshot at the time, she and Sheila Hein--her partner for 18 years--ended every phone call to each other with the words "I love you." Their last call, at 9:20 A.M. on September 11, was no different. Neff, who was at work as a photo technician, had called Hein, a civilian Army employee who worked in the Pentagon, when news broke of the World Trade Center attack.

"We knew something absolutely insane and terrifying had happened," Neff says.

When Neff heard minutes later that a third plane had hit a U.S. target--the Pentagon--she tried to call again. This time she didn't get through.

"If you figure the odds of being hit in a five-sided building, she had a 20% chance," Neff says. "I knew it was going to be chaos [at the Pentagon], and all I could do was wait. So I went home, and friends came by. And we all waited and waited. I just thought, Come on, honey."

It wasn't until October 11 that the Pentagon officially notified Neff of Hein's death. Officials delivered Hein's ashes to the couple's Hyattsville, Md., home in early November, along with a flag, her Defense of Freedom medal (a new honor created for civilian Defense workers in September 11's wake), and the diamond-studded gold band Neff had given her 18 years ago.

The weeks since have been a bureaucratic blur for Neff, 54. She says she has spent so much time on the phone--talking to friends, handling bills, and trying to secure aid from charities--that she had to replace her desk chair with something more comfortable.

So far, Neff has been denied Hein's government life insurance and turned down by the Virginia Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. But things could be worse. At least she and Hein, 51, drafted wills seven years ago that left everything they owned to each other.

"I have been denied a few things, but I'm one of the lucky ones," she says. "[Pentagon survivors] have been treated very kindly, and the Army has been terrific."

Neff has now decided to take a leap of faith and follow through with a dream she and Hein had discussed: quitting her job to pursue a career in real estate. She plans to use what money the couple had to pay her bills until she sells her first house. "It's a bigger risk now than ever," Neff says. "But if I didn't do it, I just knew I'd get a cosmic kick in the ass."

For Bill Randolph, meanwhile, the weeks since his partner, Wesley Mercer, died have been the first in which he's been able to be open about their 26-year relationship.

Randolph was sitting down, tethered to the dialysis machine that cleans his blood for four hours three times a week, while he watched on TV what he later realized was his partner's death. Later, a call from officials at Morgan Stanley, where the 70-year-old Mercer was vice president of corporate security, outlined the last heroic moments of Mercer's life:

He was drinking coffee on the World Trade Center's ground level when the first plane hit. He rushed up to the 44th floor to supervise the company's evacuation procedure, which worked almost flawlessly. All 3,700 employees made it out of the building before the second plane hit their doomed tower.

Then Mercer, a decorated Army veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars, went back upstairs to make sure everyone had made it out of the building safely.

"That gets me through the tears and the sadness," Randolph says. "He left this world doing what he wanted to do. He died a hero. Every night I pray that 3,700 families are together because of my friend. He would have been happy that he was able to accomplish that."

Randolph, 45, who works as an organist at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, says playing music has given him solace in his newfound solitude. So has the generosity of friends and neighbors. Many of them contributed to collections for Randolph, who relied on Mercer for more than half of their household expenses.

Mercer's wife, whom Mercer legally separated from in 1973 but never divorced, is considered his next of kin. So she'll receive his military pension and Social Security benefits. But Randolph says Morgan Stanley gave him $17,000 to cover immediate expenses. Now he hopes he can protect the life they built.

Randolph was 19 when he took a summer security job with Mercer, who was then 43. They moved in together a year later and had made their home in Harlem ever since. "He was my first romance," Randolph says. "He wasn't open. But he knew who he was."

Mercer's family assumed the two were only roommates. And Mercer never told anyone at work, choosing to keep his private life just that. "[The family] had no idea of the scope of our relationship, and they're angry at him for being gay and not telling them," Randolph says, adding that Mercer's family didn't attend the memorial service he planned.

Randolph fears the worst of his grief will hit him when he next visits Barbados, where the couple had vacationed each of the past 16 years. Mercer had wanted to spend a few months there after his planned retirement on December 31, 2001.

"I've had 26 years of life experiences with him, and they can't be taken away from me," Randolph says. "I hope that the world will acknowledge gay partners, that this is a family too."

In Larry Courtney's case, it took losing his partner of 11 years to make him realize how kind strangers could be--and how strong he could be himself.

Courtney arrived at his midtown Manhattan office at about 9 A.M. on September 11 to find a voice mail from his partner, Eugene Clark, who worked for Aon Consulting on the 102nd floor of the World Trade Center's south tower. Clark's message said, "I'm OK. The plane hit the other tower. And we're evacuating."

Courtney didn't know what his partner was talking about until he turned on the TV and watched the second plane hit the tower that the 47-year-old Clark was, no doubt, rushing down.

Courtney, 56, spent the next week posting fliers with Clark's picture around the city, phoning area hospitals, and fielding calls from friends and family. He started to keep a log of the 30 or so phone calls he received each day to show Clark as soon as he came home.

It wasn't until almost two weeks after the attack, during Sunday Communion at St. Luke's Lutheran Church near Times Square, that Courtney finally accepted the worst. "I was just able to consciously let him go," he says. "I was able to entrust him to God and let him go."

He calls the now-famous Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 "heaven" and says he finds his strength in the support of others. "I'm not a very strong person emotionally, but I really feel like I'm held up by angels' wings all the time." Notes slipped under his apartment door, understanding coworkers, even the crusty New York City detective who kindly helped him file for Clark's death certificate as his next of kin--all are proof.

Still, Courtney says he has slept very little and that there are many days when he can't eat. But the death of his brother's wife from cancer two weeks after September 11 and his warm visit with family back in Oregon reminded him that life, and death, go on.

When he returned to New York, Courtney decided to take charge of his life. He started by putting a bit more of himself into the two-stow apartment the couple had made their home. Clark liked white walls. These days, Courtney says, he's "trying out some color."

He also used part of the proceeds from Clark's life insurance to buy himself a little freedom--in the form of a new silver Mazda Miata. He likes to drive it with the top down and the heat on high, although he now has to negotiate directions without Clark's copiloting for the first time in nearly a dozen years.

"On my last trip I thought, Gene would have enjoyed this," Courtney says. "Then he would have asked, `Why didn't you get the convertible Jaguar?'"

Human Rights Campaign spokesman David Smith is hopeful that all gay survivors, regardless of their current incomes, will qualify for the September 11 Victims' Compensation Fund once the Justice Department finalizes its rules this spring. It will offer survivors of attack victims a settlement, ranging anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million, if they agree never to sue the airlines targeted in the attack. Until then, he says, the losses that living partners have had to face underscore how vulnerable they currently are under the law.

Just ask Keith Bradkowski.

"It's become my mission to prevent other gay couples from going through what I have gone through," he says. "The grief is just incredible. And now all I have is memories."

Stefanakos has also written for Newsweek.