I love

[Michele 1]

I cannot help hearing the Hindenberg announcer scream memories into my head: "The humanity! Oh, the humanity". I echo the cry that rips through my heart, tumbling in my mind. That cry courses thought the canyons of my life. I murmur it to myself, as if believing that if I can say that enough, perhaps, just perhaps, humanity will reenter the picture. It isn't working, but I keep trying. I feel as if I had cut away, and I'm looking for my silver handle, reaching desperately, and I cannot find it. Oh, I cry into my mind, oh, the humanity!
I think about the events of this week, the trauma, the horror, the insanity of it all. I think my generation has been lucky, that the bill due for freedom had not come due 'til now. I consider the price every generation has paid, and I had never thought that there may come a time when I would be asked the same that was asked of my father: to pay with my blood, to pay with my sacrifice. If ever I had thought about it in the past, I believed that the debt owed had been paid, and that the sacrifices of my parents, and of generations before them, had finalized the amount owed. But I am wrong. It is our turn, our turn, our debt and our turn. Oh, the loss. The humanity lost, now and in the future.
I sit outside on the porch, watching the day pass, a great lassitude, a horrendous fatigue, invades me. I watch the sky, once a comforting sight, still beautiful blue and summer warm, and listen closely. I immediately turn skywards to find the plane overhead, once I hear the drone of the engine. It used to be background noise; it is now a potential source of danger. I sit on the lawn, looking at my flowers, wondering if they will still bring me the same pleasure, the same peace, as before. They haven't yet, but that is not their fault. I listen to the sounds on the street, the murmuring of the cars that pass my home. I hear a new sound - and any new sound is suspect to me. My frightened soul cries "danger", and I try to walk confidently to the street to see if I can see this thing which makes the new sound. I spot a truck, with flags flying from its tailgate and antennae, and I hear the sound - the sound is coming from the flags whipping in the speed created wind. I hear that sound almost constantly now, and it begins to replace the lack of airplane noise. It is a comforting sound which fills the black night with the knowledge that the unity, the fellowship, the nation joining under a symbol of our freedom. It is a sound, which pushes back the fright, brings a peace to me. Perhaps, I think, I am being silly, because of the comfort in a simple sound, a simple display. No mind, I'll be silly. It helps a bit today. It helps. I buy 100 flags, and set them on every desk in my office, so that in the morning, people will know, people will hear, and people will be comforted.
I crave jumping, skydiving, celebrating my life. I want so much to jump into the sun's rays again, to rejoice in my life by dancing through the blueness and follow the path the sun places before me. I want to validate all life by doing this. I want so much to resume my new passion, and then I hear we will send paratroopers into battle. They will not feel the joy I know, they will not experience the freedom. And I want to experience that true challenge, that freedom, that joy, that indescribable ecstasy of chasing death from my life, from my mind. And I will wait. I will dream of it, jumping through the night, jumping to the serenity that is there, 2 ½ miles in the sky. I will dream of it, and I will wait to make it so.
I listen very carefully to the stories of the dying this week. And I'm surprised with the realization they all ended the same way. To a soul, they all ended the same way. I know now that there will be no profound statement I will utter at my death, no statement of wisdom from over the years. I now know what I will say to my father and mother as they die, and I now know what is said at the moment I see that cloaked, hooded figure approaching me. I know now that I will only say "I love you". And that is all that needs be said. Story after story, tale after tale, told over and over, the single message in it, regardless of the plane or the building, cell phone or land line, ear to ear was simply and no more than "I love you". No proclamations of hatred, no blurtings of anger. The people said that they loved. They loved, and they wanted one last chance to tell that they loved. And so when it is my turn, I will say I loved. That will be all. And that will be enough. And until it is my turn, I will say I love more, and mean it more.
I love.
Ciels-
Michele
"What of the dreams that never die? Turn to your left at the end of the sky".
~e e cummings~