Howdy. It’s raining. Thought I could use a change of scenery today, so I went on a quest for a new coffee shop. I found “Coffee Girls” on the boulevard. Ultra-hip place. It’s in an area of town where there are a lot of art and design studios, but it manages not to be pretentious. I wish it wasn’t such a long drive from the corporate, suburban, hell that I call home. I’m all for capitalism and everything, but sometimes living in a cookie cutter world of restaurants and shops and radio stations just feels oppressive to me. I find myself yearning for an experience that is unique or authentic. This place satisfies that yearning as much as any coffee shop could.
It was recently brought to my attention that in bringing all of you up to speed a couple posts ago, I carelessly omitted one of my more memorable experiences of the last few months.
So there I was (all good stories sport this preamble) working at the flight school desk. The phone rang. The woman on the other end explained that she had a friend who had recently died. Her friend had spent a significant portion of his life working at the very airport out of which I operate my meager flight instructing business. He didn’t have any family to speak of, but had been somewhat a part of the bereft caller’s family.
As she laid out the circumstances, I had an inkling of where this was all going. People don’t usually call the flight school to chat about their dead friends. I was still sort of shocked to actually hear her request. He had requested upon his passing, to have his cremated remains dispersed over the airport.
“Would there be anyone there who would be willing to do that?” she inquired.
At that moment, the “Story Value” philosophy of life took over. This philosophy, owing its roots to the great philosophers, (Frost, Blackwell, Deneault) demands that if there are two possible courses of action, I take the one that will yield the better story later. Since it became a guiding principle of my life, I have realized its immense value and wisdom.
I assented and the funeral date was set. As word got out what I was to take part in, I was amazed to discover that practically no one else would have volunteered for the position of aerial undertaker.
“It’s going to get in the airplane, you know!” was a common response. I didn’t care.
When the day finally came, I worried greatly about my ability to keep a straight face, and wondered if it was my place to do the whole “well, should we say a few words…” shtick.
We departed with the dearly departed in a plastic bag. Attached with duct tape to the cellophane coffin was a length of plastic tubing meant to guide the ashes out of the airplane and to minimize blowback. It looked like it would work.
When we got to altitude, there was a pause as we all just looked around at each other. Before long, though, the patriarch of the family opened the window and commenced the dump without saying a word. Immediately, there was evidence that maybe the plastic tube should have been a bit longer. A cloud of thin dust filled the cabin; not so much as to obscure visibility, just enough to feel in your nostrils and make your teeth feel gritty. They also seemed to be having trouble getting the ashes to flow from the bag through the tube.
“This just isn’t working that well,” they complained at one point, but kept making steady progress. Finally, the bag was empty and we began our descent. The debacle of the dumping had overshadowed the somberness of the event to the extent that when the tower advised “Wind check, 270 at 14…” I let out an overly chipper “Oh Baby!” at the prospect of getting some crosswind landing practice. The landing was a non event, even though I was kicking myself all the way down final for the “Oh Baby!” comment.
The melancholy didn’t settle in until after the family had left and I made my way to the line shack to find the dust-buster. Human ashes are of a different consistency than I had previously assumed. I had figured them to be almost entirely dust. To my surprise, the bits that clicked through the handheld vacuum as I tidied up the plane evoked kitty litter more than powdered sugar. One of the most unique, authentic, and humbling experiences of my life was when, on my way back to the line shack, I emptied the contents of the dust-buster into a 55 gallon trash barrel in the hangar.
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