The Arrival

I used to work for the airlines. This was back in the day before TSA and 911. Everyone went to the gate and waited for wives, loved ones, relatives. At the other end of the spectrum they would walk this same group to the gates to send them off. The gambit of emotions always got me as I watched quietly from my corner and even at the young age of 18, 19, It help level set ‘the world’.

The ‘world’ to me was all of the ‘stuff’ that we ‘think’ is important… that we ‘think’ matters. As I have said often, the news is ‘much ado about nothing’ most of the time. It makes the smaller things in life seem much bigger because someone puts music, headlines, etc with it. In a flash, something that has been happening for 1000’s of years, every day becomes cataclysmic in nature, usually based on an agenda…

Opps… let me step off ‘that box’ again and get back to the thought at hand. So the arrival or departure of loved ones was a big deal when I was a kid. Though air travel was a ‘normal’ part of life, airports did and still do have ‘chapels’. My thought as a kid was that this was where the ‘damned’ started their journey on river Styx… in the airport chapel, just before the crash!

But I would watch the reunions and see how people reacted when leaving or arriving from a trip. I would suggest you watch it yourself the next time you get a chance…

You will see a line of folks waiting, almost ‘cheering’ as the arriving passengers walk off the air stairs or jetway back in my day. Today, there is a no man’s land where you can’t pass, but what this means is that EVERYONE, not just one flight but all flights pass by this section and you have 100’s of people waiting. Even if no one is waiting for you, you can sense the feeling, the energy that someone must feel as they walk through the gate, the finish line of safely coming home.

Last night Elizabeth returned from Kona Hawaii. For the last 20 years of travel in my life, I have been the one to go away and have not been the one waiting. Mom and dad are possibly the only folks I have been to the airport to wait on, and that was a long time ago. Now, ‘the kids’ i.e. mom and dad, go on excursions often, and it’s become a way of life. So last night, it’s 9 pm, and I am in the group of 100’s waiting for loved one.

There were dads sneaking up, behind large concrete support columns, hiding from the two year old passey faced child who grins so big his whole face brightens in recognition of ‘dada’. Moms, children, sweethearts… the whole gamut of relationships were ‘reconnecting’ during the arrival of loved ones. Days, weeks, or just hours apart didn’t matter…

It was the ‘coming back together’ that was being celebrated.

As I get older, I see the part of my life that I have taken for granted becoming more ‘potent’ or much like a good wine that ages, it just gets better and it becomes more ‘important’, more acknowledged… just more.

Shape, size, gender, background, skin color, belief system, family origins… those might seem to matter, but in the end… not so much.

Tonight, we just left the memorial service for Elizabeth’s Grandmother Sophie Ferstendig. Sophie passed away about 10 days ago. Per her wishes, she was buried in New York, but the family here waited till today to say ‘goodbye’. Sophie was Jewish, and I think there is nothing more stirring than a sound of a weeping, solo violin playing a Jewish melody. There is such agony and soul to Jewish music and this so perfectly fit Sophie’s life… and death. Later in the day we collected ourselves at the family’s house to complete the process by having enough food to feed every mouth in the Philippines! And… to just ‘be’ together’ as we learn to move on with Sophie’s moving on.

That evening the sun was setting, the birds were flitting back and forth to the feeders over my head, while we sat out on the deck. The white puffy cumulous clouds and blue sky were partially block by the North Carolina Pines standing as silent sentinels in the yard, when the the family started singing Ose Shalom – He who makes peace in his high places, He shall make peace upon us.

It makes me wonder, as we gather to let go, what the arrival must be like on the other side? Are there long departed loved ones waiting behind the columns of eternity, grinning from ear to ear, waiting to welcome us home after a long journey? Are they standing, clapping, shouting, jumping up and down by the 100’s, 1000’s waiting for us to cross the line? Is our Father, waiting, with the knowing only God the Father knows, for us to finally join the eternal family where no tear is shed and there is no more pain…My thought is…Sophie has the smile we all knew, but it isn’t the shadow of the smile we have here in this land, it is the smile of knowing, the smile of peace, that she has finally arrived…

May we all know such peace,

Safe Journeys this week…