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April 27, 2011

A Trip To The Airport

By the time I landed in New York last Friday, I'd been awake for over twenty-four hours, and those on just a few blinks of an eye the night prior. I was happy to be alive. I'd had a lovely evening at home with my wife that past evening, and when I woke her to say goodbye before heading to the airport, I noted a tenderness in our farewell of the sort that would be well-remembered were we to never see one another again. Something about the smile that lingered on her face as she quickly slipped back into sleep imparted a gentle sense of closure; the goodbye felt like it could have been one with a capital G.

I left and locked the door behind me and in the shuttle that carried me to the airport listened to a story on the BBC timed to that dawn of Good Friday about the ways in which we come to terms with death. There were interviews with a priest who was on his deathbed and a woman who counseled cancer patients, and a young man whose brother was killed in a bombing. The tone of the story was firm but comforting, and underscored throughout with Catholic hymns that I'd grown up with, week in and week out. The sun was not yet risen, and in my weariness I wondered if I was being prepared for something. I'm not a fatalist, but I couldn't deny the immense sense of finality that seemed to be trailing at my heels. I began to make a list of lasts: the last thing I'd eaten, the last thing I'd read. The last movie - what would they find in the DVD player and think, "this was the last movie he ever saw?" Of course, it was The Thin Red Line, fraught as it was with all those philosophical bemusing on the great beyond, which I hadn't finished watching the day before.

The radio story continued. Another hymn came on the soundtrack, and the sole other passenger in the shuttle chimed in, singing along softly in the seat behind me. 72 hours later I was in the Atlanta airport, waiting on a delayed connection on my return home. When I finally boarded the plane and sat down, next to the woman who's still sitting next to me now, she was on the phone with someone and in tears. I couldn't tell what they were talking about. "He could just fall asleep" was the one snippet I overheard from which I could draw any conclusions. She was on that phone until right before we took off. We have yet to land.

Posted by David Lowery at April 27, 2011 2:10 AM