It seemed appropriate to celebrate Memorial Day by going to the Flight 93 memorial site. The drive through neat farms and small towns was easy under a grey and lowering sky. It had rained for the last three days. Flags were out in many of the towns and on houses lining the road. Almost none were at half-mast, except on government buildings, and no one uses a mourning ribbon for fixed staff flags, even if they know about them. I think, as I do each Memorial Day, of lilacs in the dooryard, the Civil War and the gentleness of Walt Whitman and what the soldiers must have felt under his nursing care. I hope that the lilacs will still be in bloom and beat back the encroaching climate change. The heart shaped leaves will never change; I will miss the blossoms and their scent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The road to the memorial, called The Flight 93 Approach, made me wonder it this was really the path the plane had travelled and were we chasing its shadow across the landscape as I often see looking out a plane window on a clear day, as was 9\/11. The road rises, falls, and turns; I imagine the passengers and their fear as the plane lurched and twisted as the terrorist piloting the plane tried to keep the marauding passengers off balance while they learned, processed the fates of the passengers on the other flights: American Airlines Flight 11, United Flight 175, and American Airlines Flight 77, and plotted their heroic action to retake the plane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The memorial site was mostly unoccupied. Two cars. I was surprised. Of course, I thought there would be visitors on this hallowed day, even it if was just holiday day-trippers enjoying a Monday off from work. But the park was largely empty. There seemed to be no special gathering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was reminded of interning Johanna\u2019s ashes following her remembrance service, held between her birthday and our anniversary. Her memorial stone had been set the day before. A square hole, like a truncated shaft covered with a small plywood lid to receive the urn and ashes, was ready. It was just me, Wilson, and a thin recording of taps on my cellphone, in the graveyard in Little Compton<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coda: Johanna\u2019s stone is just steps away from James Crawford, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, who worked on the 101st floor of World Trade Center, and died in the initial attack. The ridge on the far side of the memorial site has a row of wind turbines, likely Johanna\u2019s favorite industrial invention. She loved seeing them, their graceful movement, and noted their clean energy production. On the day of her passing, I had walked the beach in the early morning, a clear winter day, and I noticed the progress on the wind farm being built of the New England coast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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