A trip to New York City to chase down some Salvador Dali prints, eat obscenely and watch some shows revealed the city that never sleeps is doing fine. Tourists are jamming the streets, shows are sold out and restaurants are buzzing.
Prices haven’t dropped either.
The trip ended on a somber note and one that drove home hard for everyone on the plane the war in Iraq.
While we were boarding in Atlanta a Marine was sitting two rows up from us and a woman with a baby asked if he would move. He obliged and ended up next to me. I noticed he wasn’t wearing the normal desert fatigues the Army and Marines wear when traveling. He was in full dress uniform with coat, white hat and white gloves.
As we approached Albuquerque from the north, the captain came on the speakers and quelled my curiosity as to why the Marine was wearing full dress uniform. The captain said the Marine was escorting a fallen comrade back from the middle east and would everyone please remain seated while he got off first and went down to the tarmac to attend to his friend’s casket.
That was a very quiet plane for the next ten minutes and no one moved a muscle when we pulled up to the gate. I was waiting for the tell-tale click of a seat belt as someone readied to pounce on their bag, but nothing. I think some folks were holding their breath while the Marine got up, grabbed his carry-on and made his way to the front.
Still no one moved.
He exited the plane down stairs leading directly to the tarmac and there met another Marine, Albuquerque city police and the dead Marine’s family.
I don’t have children. I can’t begin to understand those emotions. And my writing skills aren’t nearly adequate to describe a family meeting their loved one’s coffin as it comes down the conveyor belt from the belly of an airplane. It’s a huge white, rectangular box with rope around it. It’s a plain nondescript covering to a casket.
But that didn’t matter to the couple gazing up into the plane’s cavernous underside. Everyone watching the moment play out through the plane’s windows knew the box was coming down the belt before we saw it, just by the profound sorrow on the couple’s faces and the woman turning into her husband.
The couple was about 40 and clearly too young to be burying one of their children. Then again, it’s just unnatural for a parent to bury a child at any age. There was a younger man, about 20, with them. We assumed he was a brother of the dead Marine. After the box came to the end of the belt, all three approached and touched the box like they were touching their loved one. They rubbed the crate, patted it and held their hands still on it, palms pushing, heads bowed.
They were crying. People on the plane were crying.
The Marines stood ten feet back at parade rest.
It was a touching, personal moment that everyone shared. It felt like we were all intruding but everyone lingering there wanted to be a part of it, if for no other reason to share some of the grief, thereby lessening it for the family, who were surely unaware of our intrusion.
George Stefanopolis does an “in memoriam” at the end of his Sunday morning show. He always recognizes those killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan by listing their name, rank, branch of service and where they’re from. Watching that couple gather their dead child, come home from war, lends a whole new level to recognizing those dying in what seems to be an endless conflict.