The coffin on the tarmac.

I sit down with my fingers poised above the keys
and wait for words to come.
But my mind swirls in circles
and I wonder,
how do I write about this moment...
this moment when the idea became the reality.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012, 7:29pm:
when the answer was presented in a
flag wrapped coffin on the tarmac.

We knew the plan for the day;
three cars could meet the Air Force Honor Guard at the airport
and caravan to the tarmac
to meet Noah’s body upon arrival...
a simple, straightforward plan.

So carefully following orders
we pulled into the airport fire station
at 6:30pm.
None of us was prepared for the silver hearse we saw
parked silently beside the Honor Guard’s van.
We passed out kleenex as we lined up
and waited for further instruction.
“Follow close,” they said
and we were off.
We carted across the stark runway that backed up to a beautiful sky,
one that had occasionally showered us with tears
as we had waited,
but that now lay open and lovely as it wrapped around us.
We eased our tense and dreaded anticipation
by amusing ourselves with the colors of our caravan:
silver car, silver hearse, silver van, light gold van, maroon van, blaze orange suburban...
Muonio style.
We went through a tunnel
and wound past luggage carriers
until we came to a stop beside
an open space where Noah’s plane
would park.
We got out and stood together beside our cars,
waiting hand-in-hand.

We saw the plane approaching,
it carefully pulled into its place
and was still.
I am sure there were noises around us,
but once they opened the small door at the bottom of the plane,
I didn’t hear them anymore.
We stood together,
silently,
with our breath caught inside our chests,
hands grasping the ones beside us tightly,
and our eyes locked on the little opening.
Floating on the air
sat the question we knew needed to be answered
but which we longed was just a terrible mistake:

“Is this really real?”

What would we do when the doubt met truth?
What would we feel when reality was revealed to us?
Would we stand or would we fall?
Could we bear the weight of what we were about to see?

And so we stood
together in our dread
without a word
or a breath among us.

Then it happened;
a man appeared,
and following him came the front of a flag-draped coffin
And the silence was broken
as a collective wail of pain rose
in a crescendoed chorus from our lips;
it cracked the air where the question rested
and shattered it,
even as our hearts fell to pieces.

Foot-by-foot we watched the coffin slide across the narrow opening
until we had seen the white stars, the blue,
and the length of the red stripes had disappeared on the other side.
It came back into view as they turned it
and carefully set it onto a belt
that slowly began to move,
presenting our new reality to us in full
as Noah’s body completed its journey from Ohio to Minnesota.

There it sat before us,
what had gone out standing
had returned in a flag-draped coffin that rested in a shallow wooden box.
My father and my brother stood in full salute
as the Honor Guard marched forward
for the noble task of carrying our Noah’s coffin
to the waiting hearse.
They faithfully did their duty,
in spite of the wooden box that fought back.
Sway by sway
the flag moved across the tarmac
and disappeared into the silver hearse.
The raised arm of my brother fell
as he crumbled in a heap
where we knelt with him,
partners in the heavy sorrow
he could not stand beneath.

We wept together,
as we had so many times already,
with a common understanding of
a deeper pain
and the even greater tasks that awaited us.
And as they called us to return to our cars,
we lifted each other up
and carried each other to the cars that would take us away.
Then the caravan of silver, gold, maroon and blaze orange
retraced the path we had come in on
until we had reentered the real world
that would never be the same.

And from our lips
fell yet again the words we’d marveled over
every time they were spoken:
“We survived that.”