I don’t know whether I’d want those few moments, but I suspect I would, even though I equally suspect mine would be horror- and fear-filled. The man in the house was here, and then he was not. Maybe there were moments, quasi-moments, he had between the initial sound of shearing of lumber and his demise, but I suspect it was like this: lights on/lights off.
The playwright Tom Stoppard calls death “the absence of presence.” One minute this unnamed gentleman was present, then he was absent. Life is like that. Death is like that: present, then absent.
The CNN article gave me the names of the pilot and co-pilot. It would be unwieldy and not really plausible to list the 47 passengers whose lives were no doubt as complicated and confounding as ours. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the spokes of loss that have undoubtedly resulted over those deaths.
I’d like to have known that man’s name, the one in the house. Not for any specific reason. I wouldn’t feel any differently about him if he was James White or Whitmore Harlington or Fred somebody, but to be the one man in the one house affected by this crash, to be the sole grounded victim (like the neighbor’s house that is taken in a tornado while yours is left untouched), well, I’d like to know his name, if only to understand more tangibly — and more to appreciate — this mysterious, marvelous, and dangerous dance of living, just living that we all do every day - until we don’t do it anymore.
A name to hang the absence of presence on.
Article comments
1 - Richard in PA
The person killed on the ground was not alone in his house. His wife and daughter were there, too, but in a different part of the house. They were able to escape. He wasn't. His name was Doug Wielinski. FYI I am a Buffalo area native.