As dark as it was, the darkness made the jeweled glory of the sky that much more intense. I was off to the side of the scene, shielding my eyes from the floodlights. The helicopter was somewhere off to the left. I couldn’t see it as dark as it was. There was no moon. I let my eyes drift to the southwest, towards what I think was the dark cloud in Sagittarius...toward the part of the sky I thought looked toward the center of the galaxy. In my normal urban environment, I never see that many stars. It was glorious. I let my eyes wander. After all...there was really nothing else I could do there. The pilot stood off to my left, speaking with a deputy. The deputy’s words pulled me back from the cloudy band of the Milky Way.

"I sure don’t want to stay here tonight. Wouldn’t be surprised if this place was haunted now. People that die like that...sometimes they don’t realize they’re dead," His words were eerie. Especially in the dark, under the timeless beauty of the night sky, with the lights from the last pickup truck still there shining harsh light on the carnage in the ditch below. I suppose carnage, though, is a misleading word. There was very little left that could even be recognized as human. It had become a funeral pyre if anything. Grisly still, in it’s way...sure...but it wasn’t bloody. It was peaceful in a way. The words struck me as odd. It was a sharp contrast to the ‘shop talk’ that had dominated all conversation on scene till then. Next to him, the pilot nodded solemnly but said nothing for a while.

They called our pilot ‘Hollywood’...the deputies and SAR personnel in this area. He was famous for his unflappable nature. A captain from a neighboring agency told me an old story about how the pilot ferried bodies out of a scene and with blood-soaked back seats in the helicopter asked for a cheeseburger. I had known the man as a grizzled military veteran who flew mountain peaks fifty feet off the deck with a Coke in one hand. He was a man who would pull the helicopter in gut-churning turns just to get a better look at the rack on an elk. He was a man of biting humor and a gentle nature for all that.

Earlier that night...watching the smoke and flames die down as the firefighters attempted almost in vain to douse them...the pilot and I sat on the bumper of a Jeep. His arms were folded across his chest, a little stubble on his chin as he shook his head. He told me without taking his eyes off the scene that it never used to bother him...things like this. The sun was setting behind him, silhouetting his profile. He said he used to be invincible. He said scenes like the one we landed near were slowly taking their toll, though. I nodded but said nothing. I just turned back to the steam and smoke, watching the flames angrily flare back under the charred fuselage when the water in the ATV ran out. The pilot watched quietly, lost in his own contemplation.

The words of the deputy and the admission from the pilot I had always considered unbreakable and invincible were really what affected me the most. I was fine until the pilot said that. It was horrendous, to be sure, but I was fine till then. Maybe my mind just blocked it all out on the off chance that there was something meaningful I could actually contribute. Maybe I blocked it out because I didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that these people didn’t die outright...that maybe they crawled in desperation to escape the flames. I don’t think about that. Not much. I tell myself that I’m not an airplane crash investigator and that they probably just ended up that way after impact. I have to believe that...at least if I want to be able to sleep at night. I don’t see HOW anyone could have survived that impact, and that thought makes it better: At least it was quick.

The pilot and I were on the other end of the state supporting the local sheriff on an incident completely unrelated when all this happened. We hadn’t done a lot of flying and it was pretty uneventful. I was lounging in the command center checking my e-mail for work when the pilot caught my eye. He waved me over as he was putting on his cap. "They’ve got a possible plane crash," He told me as we jogged out to the helicopter. One search and rescue member I knew came up to the helicopter as well as a local detective. I helped them get situated as the pilot did the pre-flight checks and got in place. As I was buckling into the front seat and powering up the FLIR, the others filled us in.

They had gotten a report of a brush fire about two miles outside the airport. One witness stated it was a possible plane crash because there were gouge marks in the ground and it was fairly close to the airport. Emergency personnel were taking the possibility seriously because there isn’t really anything out in that area of desert that could burn. It was essentially bare. No brush...no trees...no houses. Just bare earth and dust.

En route, the SAR member and the pilot were debating the location that was given to us. They were pointing in various directions when I saw the smoke. "Smoke, 12:30," I told the pilot, pointing. The pilot acknowledged it and we changed course slightly. At first, it didn’t seem like much. Not from that distance. There was definitely a fire...but that’s all we could see.

Closer, though...our hearts dropped. Over the whine of the turbine and the thump of the rotor blades, I heard the old SAR member’s voice in the intercom. "Ohhh," he nearly whispered, "That’s not good...not good at all..." The tail fin was black, but clear as day. We could see the outline of the wings...the mangled and twisted propellers. In the center of the wreckage was a bright fire. It belched rolling smoke into the sky. The FLIR picture showed nothing but a bright, indistinguishable blob of white. No details. It was far too hot to see details in the infrared.

The SAR member we took with us was another grizzled veteran. He had seen the world long before he settled here. Even he seemed shaken. The pilot and the SAR member murmured quietly about the slim possibility of survivors. We circled once and saw the grim reality of what we were looking at. The wreckage was on the far side of a gentle rise. The airport was two miles beyond. The crest of the rise was marred by a long black scar. On the side of the hill nearest the airport, we could clearly see the impact point and saw the short track from where the left landing gear first touched. The initial impact must have immediately ruptured the fuel tanks which then quickly ignited. There was a black trail about two hundred feet long before the plane’s final resting spot. We touched down and the two passengers exited to begin the almost futile search for survivors. Maybe it was naive to even think it possible. I don’t think any of us really did believe anyone could have survived that. And in the end, we were of course right. No one in that plane survived.

We had nothing in the helicopter except a tiny fire extinguisher. Firefighters had trouble getting to the scene. We could do nothing except stand and watch it burn. We weren’t far from the roads, but the rolling hills and gullies made it impossible to get an engine to the scene. The firefighters had to make do with hoses on a rhino ATV or large fire extinguishers. They had no other option. While waiting for fire personnel to arrive, we reluctantly circled the scene, looking for any identifiable numbers or tags that would tell us what the plane used to be and who the victims might be. There was nothing. The fire obliterated all of it. The tail’s shape was intact, but that was all there was. The fire had destroyed any paint or numbers. We had trouble even finding part numbers that hadn’t been burned away. While looking for numbers, I only saw three bodies. Morbidly, I was actually glad I could only see three. The plane was a large, twin-engine turbo-prop and could have held much more. In the end, it turned out I was wrong and there were ten people there. I just didn’t look too close. I had no reason or desire to. There were ten. Gone. Instantly. And for several hours, we had no idea who they were or who to tell. In the area where we were, I began to desperately hope that it wasn’t a tour plane. I don’t suppose in the grand scheme that it makes any difference. Ten victims is ten victims. But that was my fear.

The pilot and I stayed on scene to offer what help we could. The pilot shuttled personnel back and forth by air since ground travel was difficult at best. As for me...all I could do was step back and try to stay out of the way. We got there far too late to help anyone and we had no equipment to fight the fire. I felt extraneous, and that left me with nothing but time to contemplate.

I had seen death before, but the last few weeks have been brutal. The images of the plane crash will be burned forever in my memory, but it had been a bad few weeks.

Toward the end of July, the beginning of August, I went on another search and rescue for a missing hiker. I flew with one of our other pilots that night and he wasn’t optimistic about our chances of finding the victim. He’d spent most of the day doing visual searches with the SAR personnel. We spent an hour or so circling the small mountain range where the victim had gone missing. During the search, the pilot revealed that there were indications that the victim was suicidal. If that were true, a search was pointless. We found nothing that night.

We went out the next morning for another visual search. We didn’t find much. The victim’s family and church all came out to help. Between the volunteers and SAR personnel, there were over 100 people combing the small mountain range. But we didn’t find much that morning. The pilot and I had to fly back to the hangar to re-fuel before we went back out that afternoon. We were chatting at Subway when we got the call. They’d found the victim. He was dead.

We flew back over the scene to see if we could figure a way to extract the body. He was a good distance up one of the peaks. They were desert mountains, though, and not very wooded. The pilot dropped me off with a cargo net and then went towards the incident command to ferry detectives and other personnel to the site.

The body was guarded by two SAR members. Also scattered near the scene were family members and friends. His father...his brother...a few members of his church. It was family who’d found him. They retained their composure better than I ever would have.

The detectives eventually reached the conclusion that it was a terrible accident, and not suicide. The cliff it appeared he had fallen from was not high. It would have been a poor choice for suicide as death would be in no way guaranteed. We loaded the body into the chopper and transported the remains for burial.

After that, our job consisted mainly of ferrying volunteers off the mountain who were getting themselves in trouble. A father-son team had gotten separated. The son was near the peak and the father was hobbling with dehydration and a twisted ankle towards our landing zone, about halfway up the mountain. We found the son first. But since there were no good LZ’s anywhere near him, we did a skid load. The pilot touched one skid to the rock and hovered. I hopped out and got the son, gave him some very perfunctory instructions, shoved him in the helicopter and followed quickly as the helicopter rocked from the weight shift. Dad stumbled into the LZ a little while later and I half carried him to the helicopter. We dropped him off and left.

And in between the disappointing missions in the helicopter and all the bad news...a brother fell on a traffic stop. I never really knew him that well but he was an iconic figure from our department who had recently retired. He had taken up arms with the local sheriff’s office and was working again as a cop. He was in excellent shape and in no way looked like his 46 years. He had stopped a car for speeding. He approached the vehicle and asked the female driver for her license and registration. She leaned over to obtain the documents, and turned back to find the deputy now lying on the ground. He never got up again. The third-hand information I got was that a massive heart attack dropped him right there.

I went to his funeral, and it was really the first funeral for another police officer I’ve been able to attend. It was a wonderful service. But the thing that struck me most was the solidarity. There were at least two hundred other cops in full dress uniform present along with the family and friends. From our department, from his current department and from every neighboring agency they came. He was given full honors. Our honor guard presented the colors, performed the 21 gun salute and folded the flag over his coffin before conferring it on the bereaved widow. I was lucky enough to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with my brothers and sisters and salute the fallen. All that was a great experience. I made it through all that. The drive from the church to the grave site was breathtaking. Over a hundred emergency vehicles followed the horse-drawn hearse with lights flashing. Police cars of every make and agency. Fire trucks. Ambulances. The local PD shut down the roads for us and saluted as we went by. People came out of their houses to watch and some had their hands over their hearts.

Then after the 21 gun salute, and taps...the loudspeakers crackled to life and the voice of a dispatcher came out. At first, I thought one of the officers present had failed to silence their radio and I was offended. Then I realized what it was. Last call for the fallen. They broadcast his name, his affiliation with both departments, and then called him ‘10-42'. The code for the end of a tour of duty. That was what finally got me. The radio.

So it’s been a rough month. The quote I used as the title of this post helps really sum up my feelings at the moment. Marcus Aurelius echoed that sentiment several times in his ‘Meditations’...the idea that in the memories of those we hold dear...we don’t really die. Through all I’ve seen in the last month, I’m slightly afraid at what I’m slowly becoming because the death and grisly images of it didn’t really bother me. They didn’t, and that worries me in some sense. The thing that bothered me, about ALL of those scenes, was the reactions of those who cared about the deceased or took something different from it. It’s been the same for me on death notifications. I’ve been able to see the light and good that the dead brought to the world simply by watching how painful their loss is to others. An entire city mourned the loss of the ten on that plane. Over 100 volunteers scoured a mountain looking for another. And the life and example of another brought hundreds of colleagues and an entire town together in grief.

In the movie ‘Contact’, the alien hallucination of Jodie Foster’s dad said something I liked: "The only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable...is each other." In the deaths of all these people, I’ve seen the pain and grief that their passing brings. But more importantly, I’ve seen the fondness with which the lost are remembered. I’ve seen the good that their lives brought. And in the end, I suppose that’s good enough for me. I’ve recently re-read Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ and several religious treatises and come to the conclusion that I’m no closer to knowing what happens when one dies than I ever was. The overarching theme in everything I’ve read–Form Socrates, to Christian scripture to even George Carlin–is that death is nothing to be feared. As Carlin was fond of saying before death caught up with him, it’s the next big adventure! Plato argued eloquently that the soul is immortal. Marcus Aurelius taught that even if the universe is nothing but aimless chaos, at least WE need not be aimless also. Most of the people who read this will be very familiar with the Christian take on the matter. I’ve seen a lot of death lately, and I’ve spoken at length with many people recently about what they believe in. I can’t claim to even tell MYSELF that I have any satisfactory answers. All I can say is that through the grief and sorrow I’ve seen, there is a very silver lining to those dark clouds. Even if the dead are simply gone, it wasn’t in vain. There are twelve lives recently that I never knew in life. However, in death they have changed me subtly through absolutely no action on their part. Wherever they are now, it seems that the world is a little brighter for having known them. And I suppose in the end that’s the most I could ask for.