In mid July, my thoughts turn toward Tam 3054. The anniversary of the crash is on the 17th. The tragedy happened in 2007, four years ago that the Airbus failed its landing at São Paulo’s Congonhas airport. How can it be four years already? But time passes. Four years since the weather, the ill-prepared runway, and the inactivated-reverser converged into the worst case scenario that stole a hundred and ninety-nine lives. Of course the number of casualties is greater than that, because each of those lost lives took down their families with them, leaving them forever changed. Leaving them.
When you have lost loved ones, holidays can become a nightmare, replacing celebration by grief and loss, magnifying sadness and pain. We can hope for the families that four years have muffled that initial response. Hopefully the families have been kind to themselves and allowed their feelings to express and ease. Some days —birthdays, holidays— we feel their presence or their loss more deeply. Let us all try to rejoice in the remembrance.
Some family and friends will be gathering to remember. Some will not. Some will have chosen not to memorialize the date of the loss. After four years for the first pain to disperse, those who remain will have fought to regain normalcy, and by now will have found new routines, new ways of facing the day and the night. They continue; but they are changed. And whether or not they gather, they remember.
They won’t be remembering the plane and its fatal flaws, the airline, or the airport. They’ll be remembering the loved ones whose absence has left a vacuum in their lives. These are families visited by ghosts. They see ghosts in their empty chairs, empty rooms, the empty passenger seat, the empty driver’s seat. They hear whispers of words not spoken. If they are lucky, they see the face of their loved ones in strangers. The turn of a profile, the shape of the back of a head. Poignant glimpses where the heart rejoices for an instant, then recognizes…no, it’s not you.
Memories remain. Like summer roses in December, they are always with us. Tidbits of memories are tucked into our pockets like bits of shell found at the seashore, treasures to be taken out and examined. We are lucky that way.
But we have more than that. The people we love are part of us. Just as part of us died with them, part of them lives on in us.
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