Getting There

I think we might have turned a corner yesterday. Maybe it's temporary, maybe it's permanent. Either is okay because grief will manifest how grief manifests. For right now, this moment, and a few hours yesterday, a corner has been turned. We are no longer glued to the television and internet. We actually are aware of the fact that we should probably clean the kitchen. We have had a couple conversation-length conversations that don't even touch on Roark or the accident. I was thinking this morning about a non-Roark related post. I'm not ready to post it yet and I was thinking about one for the first time since Wednesday.

We are now able to be wryly amused at our movie choices this week. See, we've been renting a lot of movies. Action, mindless, non-thinky movies. We both enjoy the genre and watch a good deal of it. But this week, they have all ~ that's right all ~ had an aircraft crashing, someone burning alive or both. Random titles we have never seen and have nothing in common but their genre. And the fact that aircraft go down and people burn to death. Go figure. Before this week, I can't remember the last time we watched a movie that had either of those, let alone both, of those things happen, in spite of how much of the genre we watch.

And yesterday, one of our neighbors said something offensively inaccurate and grossly inappropriate to Lithus about the crash (neighbor doesn't know what Lithus does for a living or who he and Roark are to each other but it would have been offensively inaccurate and grossly inappropriate if neighbor had said it at his office water cooler) and specifically about "that pilot who was killed." He presented himself as in the know because he had talked to someone who knew someone who was there or worked for the Forest Service or something. Lithus was calm and simply said "Neighbor, your information is inaccurate" and left it at that. Last night, I was venting about neighbor to the Divine M. Loudly. Angrily. About armchair quarterbacks and assholes who want to look and sound like they are important. About how if you are going to present yourself as knowing the truth then you had better be damn sure you're not doing so to someone who actually does know the truth. Yeah...neighbor was outside. Our windows were open. Odds are good he heard me. Wryly amused.

Another source of wry amusement for me now is the fact that they are using stock footage in most of the video. What is amusing about this is probably 60-70% of the time, Lithus is one of the pilots in the footage. There is a way to tell. Again, it's not my place to explain ~ just know there's a way to tell. And there is he is, in more than half of this footage. Another pilot who really doesn't want to be known as a hero, being shown doing his job in reports about heroes. Yep, wry amusement.

What's not amusing me, wryly or otherwise, is you are hearing things that aren't accurate. Not about the crash itself. We're not hearing anything definitive enough yet to know if that's accurate or not. But about Roark. About my friend. And it's not my place to correct the information. It's not my place to shout from the rooftops "That's not who he was!" What I will say is all this hero stuff that is being bandied about, all the statements that firefighters are heroes, about how they were willing to sacrifice their lives...well, he would've hated this shit. He would have smiled and said thank you and been very polite. All while he was hating it. He would've hated being remembered as the pilot who died fighting the fires. So, he would've simply changed the subject, asked about you, listened to your stories. And really wanted to hear them.

Those are Pobble Thoughts.