What a horrible reality to wake up to, for those of us who slept, and what a lonely void the night must have been for those who couldn’t shut their eyes except to wipe away the tears.
The streets were wet when I got up. It seemed like they were crying with the rest of us.
It would be easy to be selfish about this tragedy, to make it about how we feel, how we hurt. God, how we hurt.
But it is a shameful thing if anyone of us pretends for a moment that we understand the loss. We can no more make sense of this than know the face of God.
James Halligan said it best.
“It’s hard. It’s just so hard.”
That’s all he said before we hugged, and all he could get out before he broke away. I thought of telling him it was okay, but I knew it wasn’t. I thought about telling him that it would be okay if he cried, but I know that if he did, he might not be able to stop.
I don’t blame anyone for crying, but I want all of us to understand. The tragedy is over. I just wish the healing didn’t hurt so much.
But people die every day, and I don’t say that to trivialize the 10 who died in the plane crash, but to put things in perspective.
More than 11,000 people died in India on Friday due to earthquakes, and they are to be mourned as well. These 10 are special to us because we knew them.
So let’s do what people who have lost people do — let’s remember them.
I wish, like I think we all do, that I knew everyone aboard that plane, so that I could do them justice. The few I did know weren’t friends of mine, or members of my family, unless you count the black and orange banner covering us all.
I remember Bill Teegins, “the voice of Cowboy basketball.” I remember listening to him with my parents on KOMA out of Oklahoma City. My dad loved the way Teegins called games so much that he would mute the TV and crank up the stereo just to hear him get all excited and erupt with a jubilant “THREE!”
I remember Nate Fleming and Daniel Lawson on the court. It’s superficial compared to the bonds of love between parent and child, or brother and sister, but I knew the joy they brought to us. And it wasn’t just because they played for the Cowboys, it was because they played for us.
I wish I knew Will Hancock, Pat Noyes, Brian Luinstra, Jared Weiberg, Kendall Durfey, Denver Mills and Bjorn Falistrom, and I feel like anything I say about them will seem trite. Nonetheless, I send out all of my sympathy and condolences to the families of all who were lost. I wish there were words to adequately express, well, anything. But I know there aren’t. Some feelings just don’t have words.
What I can say is this: those lost will never be dead to us if we choose to keep them in our hearts.
I still don’t know how the sun rose on Sunday, but I’m going to make sure it never goes down on any of those men.
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