(Pull out and watch your DVD of "Top Gun" for an example of one of the types of guys with the "Right Stuff", if you have any of those kinds of movies handy, or order one on Netflix or Blockbuster or the Red Box or whatever, if you'd like to be reminded.)
My good buddy crashed and burned in a accident at an air show near his home during the same summer that Krista got married to Noah's Dad in one of those charming alpine wedding chapels in Gatlinburg and we had intertwining reunions with my ex and his family, our family and the groom's . . . family plus lots of college and high school friends of my kids.
And such joy! My best friend from the time I was ten came. We hadn't seen each other for about fifteen years and how great was that for her to meet Krista and Tom and be around all the kids of the wedding party who were staying in the chalet I had rented! Three stories on the side of a mountain with a hot tub in the basement-- way cool. An amazing time was had by all, as you can imagine, I'm sure.
August of 1995.
And strangely enough their wedding day was one day short of the first anniversary of my Mom's Mother's passing in 1994. Sweet Grandma Donna.
Isn't it interesting how sometimes days or weeks or weekends can somehow seem to suck in intense experiences even if they don't happen to be holidays?
Has that kind of thing happened in your family or among your friends?
But actually the super duper high performance experimental jet that my friend was flying in the air show in southern California, just as he had often flown it, crashed at almost the same exact time as the 25 minute Gatlinburg wedding chapel service was taking place . . . if you correlate the time zones and take atmospheric conditions, trajectory, speed and altitude into consideration.
Even though I had read about the air show crash in the paper the day after Krista's wedding, I went out of my way not to know who the pilot was.
There is more to how I finally found out that it was my friend who had died in the air show crash.
I was living in my first parsonage and there was a lot of mold from e-coli in the well water and leaking into the dirt basement. I was sick a lot -- migraines and zoomie like too much coffee and just trying as hard as I could to hold on and act normal and not end up with upper respiratory infections and asthma which were the ultimate outcomes.
The neighbor's septic field had overflowed many years earlier, and for some reason no one had seen fit to do anything about it. One of the ways I reacted to the mold was that my ears would stuff up and my left ear was worse than the right one. I was afraid I was going to lose my hearing in that ear.
I was fussing to the Lord about it as I drove around beautiful Jefferson County, WV, in my car. Then I yielded the problem to Him and said, "OK. Even if I somehow go deaf in one ear, I trust you will help me and keep me going and keep me able to serve the people in the three churches you have brought me here to serve."
In reply I felt like the Lord said to me, "Well, you are having trouble hearing because there is something you do not want to hear."
That was irritating and I not very graciously replied, "OK, Fine. Let me hear it."
A few weeks before that I had written a letter to my friend, the first time in over a year and a half. I told him about finally being in ministry and I hope he was still happy being out the Navy and flying for the airlines and hope his family was doing well, etc.
Several days before Christmas a letter came back from his wife telling me about the fatal crash a year and a half earlier, telling me about their family, telling me about the 1000 or so people who came to his memorial service.
He and I had been pen pals more than anything else, had bumped into each other at the air base near Las Vegas, and had only seen each other three times in person. But he was one of the best friends I have ever had and time nor distance never made any difference. Made us believe that it's possible there is such a thing as a soul twin. Gifts from beyond understanding.
Since I hadn't found that my friend had died in the crash until more than a year and a half later, you might not be surprised to know that it wasn't more than three years after that when more information was forthcoming. Until I got brave enough to look up the National Transportation Safety Board report online two or three summers ago, I didn't realize the thing about the timing across the country, but somehow maybe heart to heart, consciousness to consciousness.
Let's see if I can explain the kind of friendship we had.
There seemed to be nothing we didn't know about one another from the first moment we met. We finished each others sentences and always knew what the other would answer before the question was even asked.
He was living with the intensity of working on the final test flights of and advanced aircraft, and then helping to bring up am aircraft carrier task force to operational capability for a cruise. I was just getting used to the extreme pressures of working with F-15 pilots who intercepted Soviet bombers off the coast of Alaska, the extreme weather, the extreme competitive relationships.
A year after we met, and for the following eighteen months, during those old Cold War Days, we lost five F-15s and one T-33. Two pilots punched out of their jets and survived, but five other men died in crashes. Four were pilots and one was a sergeant getting a reward for doing a good job.
It seems like they were dropping like flies. At the sound of jet noise when they returned from their Air Combat Training missions in the skies over the center of Alaska, we were afraid to look up and see if there were the right number of planes coming home.
At the same time my friend went out on the Aircraft Carrier Coral Sea and was deeply involved in the operations of two squadrons. They lost some planes and pilots, too . . . good friends of his as were most of my lost comrades in arms. He also took part in the operation to take out the Radar sites in Libya.
I wrote to him a lot and tried to help put some color and light into his grey and blue and very busy world. We could talk to each other about losing planes and friends in ways we couldn't bring home, and there were things we didn't have to explain to one another and things we could talk about.
While the Carrier Task Force was in the Med, one middle of the night, a dark, dark aurora-less Alaska winter night, I was dreaming about him and praying for the flight ops in my dream. The water bed was set on two stacks of drawers, so I had to climb down to head to the bathroom in the middle of deep sleep. Trying hard not to open my eyes, I slipped toward the floor. Instead of my closet door there was the undulating, seas sprayed deck of the Coral Sea and the grey Mediterranean enhanced by early rose of the dawn . . . and the smell of JP-5 fumes, the diesel fuel used for ships and planes . . . and the sound of my friend's breath as he strde toward his jet.
Not even going to try to explain how that could've been.
(Just my imagination . . . once again . . . running away with me!)
Back to Florida this morning . . .I think I started this to tell you that I was pretty sure I saw my friend whether I was dreaming or not, and whether there was a separate reality where the veil was lifted or not, or whether it was an hallucination. Some of that may be semantics, anyway.
Also, probably my openness to someone from the "other side" has to do with my Mom sadly being in hospice care for the last five or six days.
And the sleeping pill I took to fend off the images hasn't kicked in yet
As Hamlet once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." ) Will Shakespeare's Hamlet -- Act 1, Scene 5, 166-67
Probably I should finish this rumination by telling you one more story. When my daughter was born I was barely 19 and a scared kid. For some unknown reason I had always been afraid I would die in childbirth. (Too many Gothic novels, perhaps. I don't know . . .)
But sure enough, after Krista was safely delivered to the world, I hemorrhaged and almost died. It was Good Friday of 1972, but her name was already going to be Krista Hope. Sometime I will tell you the whole story if you want to hear it, and if you can take it with a grain of salt. One of the features was that as I was drawn up to the light during the Near Death Experience, there was a group of people standing about halfway between the light and where I had "started" when I left my body.
I call them the "Dearly Beloveds" and they were all the people I was related to who had been alive when I was born and had passed away since. Right in front was my Dad's Father. He was a minister as well as a home builder and he baptized me, my brother and our older cousins. I was 15 months old when he passed away. My Mom's maternal grandmother, Mamie Rose, and her sister Daisy were there in the front, too.
Through a kind of telepathy they all spoke at once, welcoming me home and talking about how wonderful Krista is and how good it was to see me. It all seemed completely familiar and normal.
(Go figure . . .)
(Go figure . . .)
I'll tell you the rest later if you'd like me to do that, but the reason I told you that much was that during the last conversation with my friend in the fall of 1992, I told him about the Dearly Beloveds.
I said, whether or not we ever saw each other on earth again, he cold be sure that if I passed over first, I would be right up front welcoming him home.
And he said the same.
I said, whether or not we ever saw each other on earth again, he cold be sure that if I passed over first, I would be right up front welcoming him home.
And he said the same.
But he's not the only guy I knew who flew fighter jets and bought the farm, as I've already mentioned and talked about before this. Sometimes when I am in a higher state of psychic energy triggered by too much mold or some uncertainty, I'll walk into the living room and three or four of the dear hooligans will be sitting on the couch or lined up playing ZZ Topps songs accompanied by air guitars, dressed in their flight suits.
(You had to be there.)
That often happened in real life in a bar off base that was a log cabin with rocks on top and moss, grasses and flowers growing out of it in the summer, shades of Heidi (Oh -de-laaaay-deee-hooo!)
The things is . . . every time I saw a new therapist over the last 30-45 years and I've had to tell some of the stories . . . and I get to the part where someone called some of it psychosis, they usually lean forward really eagerly and say something like -- "Oh! Did you hear voices and see things?"
I usually sigh then and try to describe what has always seemed normal to me . . . more than just Angels in the Architecture . .
http://youtu.be/ULjCSK0oOlI
http://youtu.be/ULjCSK0oOlI
And then there was the time when a singer made a circuit that included Las Vegas, Alaska and Tyndal AB at the top of the Gulf of Mexico. When we were in Alaska the whole squadron and all their wives and girl friends (and some support personnel like me) had dinner and spent long, crazy nights at Harry Trumans' -- a restaurant dedicated to a man who decided not to leave Mt Saint Helen's when it erupted in the early 80s.
Everywhere he played, some combination of us would pop up. And toward the end of the night he had an open mic if someone wanted to sing and I sand Bette Midler's version of "The Rose," though my first true inspiration was Janis Joplins', of course.
http://youtu.be/VpYtDCF0tH8
So the bottom line is that even though it seemed to be my friend in the greyness at 3 am . . . he might not have been there . . .but I still hope he keeps his word and is the first one I see when it is time to go home.
And I wish I could tell my Mom now to look forward to who she will see . . . but maybe she already has been given a preview. Filled with love thinking of all the ways both my parents have always been filled with joy and giving us so much -- more than things . . . laughter, security, love, experiences.
It's a rambling kind of night and now I have been up 26 hours -- the sleeping pill did NOT A THING!
There's a time for everything. Thanks for accompanying me. May the Lord continue to bless you and all those you love.
Kathleen Ware Harris © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com
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