This is a blog that I should have written a couple months ago, but wasn’t necessarily one that I wanted to write. Probably because it was something I never processed very well following the Race. But the memory of this came up last night and once again I’m feeling compelled to write something, so here goes.
Last night my former squadmate and good friend Johnfrank arrived to Gainesville to start up a job with Adventures. A couple of us were in his vehicle to go check out his possible house and he asks (and I paraphrase) if there have been any moments since being back from the Race that have hit us hard after experiencing everything we did this past year.
For me it was never some feeling of being overwhelmed by massive amounts of food at a grocery store, or all the depressing news on TV, obscene consumerism, and so on. It was my final flight home into Detroit.
I spent a couple days in L.A. to do my own thing before flying all the way home to Ohio. I flew Southwest for the first time. They let you pick your own seat once you board. So L.A. to Chicago and then Chicago to Detroit. I was running on almost no sleep at this point over the last 24 hours when we boarded my final flight.
In the very first row, I noticed a serviceman in full uniform. I moved to the back and picked a window seat, preparing to let my body crash as soon as I buckled the belt. As I’m getting settled, an announcement is made that our flight is carrying a member of the US military who had been killed in action. The man I saw at the front was escorting the body home. We’re given further instructions to stay seated once we land until the man up front can disembark first.
In my mind all I can think is, “God, why? How in the hell is this fair/right/okay?” In that moment I went from excited to finally seeing my family to not wanting to be home at all in record time. The whole flight home all I could think about was the two reunions that were about to happen. Both on entirely opposite ends of a single spectrum and it made feel ill. The man below me was being returned to a devastated family that he’s been away from for who knows how long. And then here’s me, seeing my family for the first time in 11 months. I was getting to go home to a celebration.
After the plane landed and as we were taxiing to our gate, I could see a long line of police/emergency vehicles waiting along with a small crowd of people who I can only imagine to be his family/friends. So we stop and the serviceman at the front leaves the plane. Finally they announce everyone else can leave too, but let us know we can stay if we want to until the coffin is offloaded into the waiting hearse.
I stayed in my seat. I don’t know if I could have left the plane even if I wanted to. I watched as the coffin was slowly brought off the plane, as the honor guard draped the American flag on it, and as they carried the coffin to the hearse in their military formation. All together it probably took about 15 minutes. And all during that time, I was fighting back having a meltdown on the plane and thinking that I wasn’t ready for home. It’s funny that how a few days earlier it would have been perfectly normal to burst into tears on a plane, because there were 35 other people around who would’ve understood that you really weren’t off your rocker. Now that I was alone for the first time in 11 month, it would have just been embarrassing.
As I finally left the plane and got closer to collecting my luggage, I had this other ridiculous fear that I’d come out of the terminal to signs and cheers and whatnot. Not something I was remotely ready for if that was the case. Especially not when I had just come back on a plane with someone who had died in service to this country. Thankfully, there was a little delay on everyone else’s part and so this didn’t occur. But even when my sisters and mother did show up, the best I managed in the moment was a smile and swallowing the lump in my throat.
I don’t necessarily know what the exact lessons were in this. Over the final couple of months of the Race, God was really opening my eyes to “self sacrifice” and what that really looked like. Not fun lessons to learn because they happened in really hard ways which deeply challenged my perceptions of what I thought “sacrifice” to be. What much of society thinks “sacrifice” to be. Especially the personal ones we make or at least what we think we make.
I have no deep insight or final words of wisdom to share from all of this. I just felt it was finally time to share.
