It doesn’t happen often, but if it’s just after sunset, just before you make a right turn onto the far east end of KFUL over to the South East Hangars, I see a ghost. I stop, I close my eyes, take a deep breath and imagine the serene moment that Richard stopped here to watch a plane lift up into the western sky.
It’s something of a reverent reflex. When you see a plane take flight, we are in awe every time. Richard, was in that moment, a plane was simply taking flight. He had just returned from a flight and saw a beautiful twin Beech taxiing to the end of the runway. He stopped to watch it, and as it lifted away, Richard looked to his left and turned to leave the airport for home.
Then something in his peripheral vision caused him to stop. To his shock, as he looked to his right, it simply didn’t compute. There, partway down the field, next to the runway was a fireball, and time stood still.
I will never forget that phone call, where I was, who I was with. I answered and he said, “There’s been a horrible accident at Fullerton, if you heard about it I wanted you to know it wasn’t me.”
It changes you. As I am flying out of LAX tonight I quickly texted Richard, I Love You. Because I reverence a moment, when the welcome home for someone else never came.
It’s been a long learning curve for me. I often say I have become like Alex Honold in Free Solo, that the fear pathway in my brain has neutralized after hundreds of hours of flight.
I now don’t imagine kissing the ground when we have landed like our first flight. Past are the flights that I had to focus on a cute grandchild’s face we just ate breakfast with in my minds eye to get me through a flight. I even made it to Oshkosh this summer with only one “Why are we here?” mid flight.
But I do take a picture, shoot some video, share our ETA and send “I Love You’s,” because of the ghost on the corner in the sunset.
