Judy
Mo’orea, French Polynesia
Today
If I hadn’t married Henry, you wouldn’t have sacrificed yourself for me like that.
But Joe and Ronelle pointed out that if it wasn’t for Henry, I would have been on that flight with you, as planned. And then we would have both been lost.
I didn’t want to hear it from them then. Logic is not an effective cure for grief. But time did illuminate the truth of what they were saying.
When I married Joe a few months later, I knew that I wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for you.
When I held our first child, and then our second, and then our third and fourth, I knew that they wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you.
And in each grandchild, I’d think the same. All of them are here because of you, and there is not a day that I don’t remember it.
But there’s more. Two years after we lost you, Pan American started flying troops and refugees out of Vietnam. We did not have any children yet, and I felt a strong pull toward serving.
We got a marriage waiver with the airline so that I could sign up for these hazard routes. The friends we made in Florida didn’t want me to go—these were dangerous missions, and we were indeed shot at on many occasions. Nor could they understand why I was eager to get back in the air after what happened to you.
But Joe knew that I would not make peace with your loss until I could justify my own survival. Joe knew that a Pan American heart was one that did not cower behind fear.
Those flights saved lives—lives that would have been lost without Pan Am. And I wouldn’t have been there to help if not for you.
There was other good to come from it. Your parents, for example. Some tragedies tear a couple apart. It brought your parents closer together. Joe and the children and I saw them frequently over the years. They often took cruises out of Fort Lauderdale, and we would drive up to meet them for dinner. Can you imagine that? Mr. Wall Street taking off for weeks at a time to spend it with his wife?
You did that.
Mark was bereft. There is no way around that. It threw him into training even more intensely. That’s probably what earned him the silver medal in Tokyo. I watched on television as he took the stand. He kissed his medal and held it up to the sky. I’m sure that was for you. He did go on and help young swimmers as he’d planned. And years later, he married a sweet girl from Georgia who was a volunteer for the organization. It was clear that he cared for her. But she never replaced you.
No one ever could.
The world will never know what you and the other souls on board would have contributed had they not all been taken so soon. But I know, at least, what the world lost when we lost you.
When we’re young, we cling so hard, my dearest, to this earth. With everything we’ve got. Because we think it’s all we have. But loss gravitates us toward the eternal as it looks for meaning. You led a life with tremendous meaning. You left a legacy. And that’s the best we can hope for during our brief time here, isn’t it? I know this as my own bones fail me. I will soon be with the angels, as we would say. And with you. And my Joe. I have tried to live a life that honored what you did, and I think I have succeeded.
For that is what we should live for. That is what we die for.
Love.
And I have known it so very well.