Rememberance

Yesterday morning, an AirBlue plane crashed in the Margalla Hills killing all 152 passengers. Initial reports indicated that some (5-6) had survived, but as time went on, officials confirmed that all passengers perished. Watching the news clips, staring at the photographs of the wreckage, I wept. Don’t know where the tears came from, but they did…the perils of having an hyperactive imagination and a strong empathetic streak, I suppose.

Imagine the shock of having to wake up and realize the people you love most might have perished, “might” because there may still be some hope that yours were among the people who had survived. As the day wanes, you cling onto desperate, desperate hope until whatever vestiges were left hanging by a thread have since been torn down too. Dead. Dead. Your mind can’t comprehend it, can’t process the information. But they were alive a few hours ago, you reason. How can they be dead? And as the hours pass, reality dawns and steadily begins to sink in; rage, despair, grief, all cascade over you as you remember their lives, and realize how empty yours are going to be without them. This will never end, you think. This pain will never go away.

And you’re right. It will never go away. But the intensity will dull and throb, until all that remains are the memories and the ache of love lost.

Then my mind stops and flies to the passengers as they realize, with the plane losing altitude fast, this is it. This is it. Did they suffer? I weep to think of their being conscious as the flames engulfed them whole. Loss hits home so much harder when the people lost are your own, heading to your city, perishing in the hills you’ve grown up around. Never looked menacing and unforgiving until now.

I am torn between reason and belief, justifying and accepting, reasoning and understanding. There is no easy way to process this, except to pray for the souls of the dead and for the fortitude and patience of those they left behind.