I receive a few visits from friends, I go on a work trip to France, and I fly home for the holidays – and attend my grandfather’s funeral.
By James C. Hawkins | March 11, 2024 | 20-minute read
There is something quite calming about the low hum of a Boeing 747 during a trans-Atlantic flight.
Some folks despise traveling 7 hours locked in a dark tube, but I find it quite relaxing – well, once the horror of the zone-by-zone boarding has ceased, that is. There is a solemn peace after the meal service has been collected and the lights are lowered. The chattering of voices cease and you’re left with the lull of the engines. And, by this point you’ve left the light-polluted sky from the cities of the mainland, and you find yourself playing atop the starry canopy.
The date was January 10th, and I was on my way back to Madrid from spending the Christmas Holiday in the United States. And it was a trip that hadn’t gone totally to plan.
Nowadays, I’m in airplanes quite a lot and to pass the time I’ve tried to become a reader. On the first leg of my trip, I finished a chilling ghost story called ‘Dark Matter’ by Michelle Paver. It was a 1€ find in a book shop in Paris. And it gave an account of three would-be arctic explorers who spent a year alone on one of the islands around Svalbard, Norway. It was a book about how the mind can play tricks on you when you’re separated from everyone you’ve ever known and when you’re trying to eke out an existence in an unfamiliar land.
With no other reading material at hand, I pulled out my iPad to watch one of the episodes of my comfort show, Star Trek: The Next Generation. (The one with Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean Luc Picard). I had been watching from the very beginning of the series, and I was still on season 1.
‘Space…. The final frontier…,’ The episode begins with Captain Jean Luc’s billowing psalm. ‘These are the voyages of the star ship Enterprise.’ My shoulders relaxed and I turned my face towards the window of the plane. I couldn’t see Stella…yet, but Orion’s belt was firmly in my line of sight.
It’s funny to think about how the first philosophers and stargazers turned to the stars for guidance. I mean, the three stars that make up Orion’s Belt aren’t even near each other in reality. I wonder what the planets are like that are orbitting those stars? My eyes glazed and for a moment, just beyond the stars of Orion’s Belt, I could see the cloudy band of light that forms our view of the Milky way galaxy.
‘Why do they call it the Milky way?’ I said to myself. ‘Why not call it something better and more space-y like Celinedion? …. Alas, my heart will go on I suppose.’
I winced at myself for even thinking of that joke, but I was happy that it hadn’t left my mouth for someone to hear.
The vastness of space is mind-numbing and staring into blurry hues of the endless expanse makes it seem even more endless. It takes light 100,000 years just to cross our own galaxy, and how many galaxies dot our universe? It’s hard to think about.
‘…to BOLDLY go where no one has gone before!’ I paused Patrick Stewart’s voice and sat in the hum of the jet’s engines. My seat partner had started snoring, but it wasn’t too bothersome. In truth, I was a bit restless. While I was home for the holidays my 92-year-old grandfather died. He had lived a long and good life and had done so with intention.
He kept a journal and during his retirement he wrote a lot of things down. He wrote about his feelings about getting older, stories of our family history, even instructions for what to do when he passes away. In 1986 he even wrote down his rules to live by, which were read at his funeral:
- Pray every day
- Read the Bible every day
- Be more thankful
- Visit the sick
- Be kind to everyone
- Say something good about everyone, every day
- Develop your love for others
- Be a friend to everyone
- Go to church regularly
He was a champion of mindfulness and selflessness and undoubtedly, he left this plane of existence with a sense of Mission: Accomplished.
While I was home for the holidays, he and I were able to share some words before he passed, but our time to truly connect was gone. Every moment that we had spent or will ever spend together was complete. Time had run its course and the sun had set.
I breathed deeply. Everyone around the plane had settled into their most comfortable sleeping positions and I lowered the brightness on my tablet to be courteous. My face stayed fixed towards the deep night sky and my mind continued to drift. For the days that I was home, he and I exchanged ‘I love you’s’ but not much else. So much had happened since he was put in the hospital that I hadn’t gotten to tell him about. I touched the screen of my tablet and the Enterprise’s adventure-of-the-week resumed.
Captain’s Log, Star Date: 2nd November 2023
My friend John made the journey from Nashville to Spain to spend the week with me. He was the first person I have hosted since moving to Madrid and thankfully the accommodations seemed to suit him. As a fellow explorer, he was excited to discover new places.
I showed him my favorite spots around Madrid before we set off to Valencia, Barcelona, and the small beach town of Sitges. It felt so normal to have him here and I had forgotten what it was like to have a stable friend exist out from behind the camera of a cell phone.
Captain’s Log, supplemental, 12th November 2023
One week after John had left, my friends Tyler and Amanda, who I had met when I lived in St. Louis, made a trip to Spain, and stopped in Madrid. We ate classic Madrileño cuisine and enjoyed some of the best cocktails. They have both since moved away from St. Louis but seeing them allowed each of us to reflect on how much growth has happened in the subsequent 6 years.
Captain’s Log, supplemental, 17th November 2023
For the third week, I was visited by some other friends. When I had lived in California (when I was just a wee lad of 21) a group of men took me under their wing and showed me how to be an adult. Bret, Steve, Jim, and David have entertained me and given me guidance over the years. So, when they wanted to stop into Madrid for a quick ‘hello,’ I was only too happy to take in the city with them.
November was a month of great connection for me, at a time when my mood was at its lowest. It reminded me that I am capable of making friends in new places because I have done it before – many times, in fact.
Time escaped me as I was going over all the highlights of November. I heard the sound of crying through my headphones, and I snapped back to attention. As I had been in my own world, Denise Crosby’s character, Lieutenant Tasha Yar, had died during the episode. Ugh, great – now I have to rewind. I then rolled my eyes at thinking about the absurdity of ‘rewinding’ by dragging my finger across a glass tablet. Kids nowadays would gawk at the very idea of waiting for a VHS tape to fully rewind. My grandpa would have laughed too. The Bates family was the first family in Alvaton, Kentucky to receive electricity.
Before I started the episode over again, the now-deceased, Lt. Tasha Yar had recorded something for her crew in the case of her death and I listened as her hologram spoke to her comrades.
‘…So you will understand when I say, ‘Death is that state in which one exists only in the memory of others…
which is why it is not an end.’ No goodbyes. Just good memories. Hailing frequencies closed, sir.’
I smiled. No goodbyes. Just good memories.
If you have a moment, you can watch the clip here.
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At the end of November and the beginning of December I spent some time in Paris for a work event.
I knew I was going to the United States for the holidays, so my plan was to use this time to force myself into the Christmas spirit. If I couldn’t find the magic of Christmas, was there any hope for me? My friend Sara brought me around to several Christmas Markets that Paris is known for and after some Vin Chaud (hot, mulled wine) I was feeling the Christmas spirit, indeed.
Every time I travel, I am doing so for work. The days are long and exhausting, and so the nights aren’t filled with much excitement. However, on one night, my friend and colleague, Hugo, and I managed to carve out some time for just the two of us.
Our hotel was in the 14th Arrondisement, where you won’t find many tourists, and it had a completely different air around it. We walked past a wine shop that was serving free Vin Chaud to passersby. We stopped and chatted with the collection of people that had amassed around the stand. Hugo was a Paris local but, like me, had moved to Madrid for work. He tried to include me in on the French conversations, but I didn’t mind sitting back and listening to everyone talk.
One such woman named Claire, a French woman who seemed to be in her late 70’s, charged up to us wearing a huge grin. Blonde and short in stature, she met our gaze without reproach.
In French, she asked where we were from and when Hugo told her that we lived in Madrid she transitioned from quintessential Parisian French to fluent Spanish. Hugo and I were gob smacked. She told us that her husband had been Peruvian, and they spoke in a combination of French and Spanish for their entire marriage.
Her smile and cheery expression relaxed as she then told us that this would be the first Christmas without him.
With a sharp inhale and shrug of the shoulders, she said ‘C’est la vie!’ and downed her paper cup of Vin Chaud. She bid us adieu and a Joyeux Noel and was off on her way as quickly as she had appeared.
Across the street, Hugo and I heard the sounds of caroling outside of a church. About 35 people were gathered in a circle to sing and their voices echoed off the steeple. We turned our attention to them in silence for a few minutes. They sang beautifully and we meant to give the singers a bit of money but didn’t.
The moon was full and there was an unexplainable magic in Paris that night. I had never been to the city during a cold weather month, and I could finally understand why people seemed to like this city so much. That is, until Hugo and I mistakenly ordered Kidneys at dinner later that evening.
Paris is a place that holds a mirror up to your soul. If you’re grumpy, Paris will be treacherous. If you’re feeling romantic, Paris can seem like a fairytale. Another night during the trip, Hugo invited me out with his crew to celebrate a fashion show that one of them had finished. On my way there, I facetimed my dad.
He answered.
‘Hey Dad, can you see that?’ I asked. ‘It’s the Arc de Triomphe all lit up. And, just behind that, it’s the Eiffel Tower.’
I didn’t stop to ask if he was having a hard day or anything, but for a moment, we got to pretend that we were looking at the Eiffel Tower at the same time.
Hugo’s friend, Zak was there at the party, but he had come to Madrid when my friend John was in town in November, so we had seen each other recently. You may remember Zak from my first post about Paris in May of 2023. It was an adventurous night that we still laugh about.
The longer I am here and the more connections I make in Europe, the smaller the world seems to feel. I guess in the grand scheme of the universe, the world is small. Or ‘…a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.’ As Carl Sagan once said.
The fashion show that Hugo had invited me to was quintessentially Parisian and the night that followed was filled with drinks and connection that only the genuine hospitality of the French can offer. It might have been one of my favorite trips this year, but maybe that’s because I didn’t do it alone.
After Paris, I had booked the weekend after to be in Vienna, Austria – which was a mistake.
I was mentally and physically exhausted from the work event and the last thing I wanted to do was walk around another unknown city. I hadn’t even made an itinerary of what things I wanted to do. And on top of all that, Vienna was being inundated with heavy snowfall.
I managed to make use of the time there, but I mostly relaxed and drank tea. How horrible, right?
After rewatching the episode of Star Trek, I was heaving wet sobs and tears.
(Skin of Evil, season 1 episode 23) Thankfully, no one was awake in the back half of the plane to hear my sounds of distress. I then closed my iPad and tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t seem to close my eyes. The star light was bouncing off the clouds and streaks of silver scored through the deep dark blue of the night sky.
I’ve always loved space. The thought of being a space explorer has always been a fantasy of mine. To leave the surface and see the planet from the vantage point of the night sky or as Archibald Macleish once wrote… ‘To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold.’
To me, I hope this is what happens to my consciousness or my spirit when I die. I want to be in space and be able to see the earth from a new vantage point. This thought has always been comforting and healing to me when my mind drifts to thoughts of dying.
I wish I could say that being back in the United States for the holidays was healing, but it… sucked.
First, I got into separate fights with my mother and my father. Then, I got food poisoning TWICE which made me a complete zombie on the actual day of Christmas. I had done such preparation to be in the spirit for this holiday and for what? To be incapacitated? That’s not fair!
It wasn’t all bad, though. I got to see John and all my friends in Nashville. Along with my dear friend Jamie whose wedding I attended in May who was in Kentucky also for the holidays. Also, my thoughtful sister-in-law, Juliana, put together a surprise 60th Birthday party for my parents because she knew I wouldn’t be there to celebrate with them on their actual birthdays. So maybe it wasn’t terrible. I mean, any Christmas worth remembering is filled with its hiccups, right?
However, during these three weeks my grandfather was moved from nursing care to the hospital, and then a few days later to hospice. He passed soon after he arrived. When we got word, we all went together as a family. I’ve never had to say a final goodbye like that before and the experience was a bit unsettling.
His hand was cold.
And saying goodbye felt too ceremonial. The only thing that crossed my mind as I touched his hand was, I hope that heaven is real.
I don’t have any memory or awareness of myself before I was born, and I imagine that to be the experience of what happens to us when we die. Despite the firm beliefs of ideologies across the world, nobody truly knows what happens to us when we die. My grandfather believed that the afterlife is spent with God. If any person on this planet deserves to have their afterlife spent with God, I would bet that my grandfather would have earned that honor.
I believe that God and heaven exist, but I fundamentally disagree with our current understanding around what/who God is and how we experience ‘heaven.’
And so, if I could have one wish – if I could bend the rules of space and time – it would be to make heaven exist so that my grandfather could live out eternity in peace. Perhaps that is what he’s doing now.
The flight attendant who I had flirted with a bit during the meal service then arrived with a small cup protected in his hands. It was a glass of red wine. ‘Didn’t you ask me for another one?’ He said with a smile and a wink. I hadn’t asked for anything, but he already knew that. I exchanged some remarks to reward him for being bold, but not more than I had to.
I sipped the pinot noir, but it tasted sterile. I’ve written previously about that I think the meaning of our existence is for the universe to know itself. But why do we live and why do we die? I don’t really care to find the answers. The one thing I know is that loss is a luxury that is only experienced by the living.
The concept of death is something that Gene Roddenberry and the writers of Star Trek tackled during the series. In one of the episodes that I have watched since taking this flight, the crew of the Enterprise face an interdimensional-alien that encounters humanoids for the first time. It is confronted about the concept of death and why lifeforms experience the phenomenon. It asks, ‘What is death?’ And Captain Picard does his best to answer it. If you’re curious about his answer, you can watch the 2-minute clip here.
At that moment I noticed a certain commotion of energy going on behind me a few rows back. Flight attendants started rushing to assist a woman who had collapsed in the aisle. I stared blankly, frozen in my seat. My seatmate was still asleep and hadn’t noticed what was happening, until the pilot came on the speaker to ask if there was a doctor on the plane. I had always heard stories of this kind of thing happening on flights, but this was my first time to witness it.
My seatmate heard the captain’s call for aid and snapped awake. He unbuckled himself and walked to the collapsed woman to check her. He helped the crew move her to the back of the plane where her body seemed to be lifeless. Was this woman about to die? My seatmate wouldn’t return until we landed in Madrid, so I wouldn’t get the chance to ask him.
I half-expected Dr. Crusher to rush to her side and start waving her proverbial magic wand to diagnose and treat the fallen passenger.
What do I do? I can no-more prevent that woman’s death than I could my own grandfather’s passing. I felt, feel, and have been feeling completely useless. But, if that woman died, and even at this moment I’m not sure what her fate was, why do I not care as much as when my grandfather passed?
We landed back in Madrid with no communication from the captain. I disembarked, collected my luggage, and hopped on the metro back to my apartment. My life would go on, but then what? The years will pass, and I will have experiences, but then what? Why did we evolve consciousness just to be tormented with the knowledge that consciousness will end one day?
Because life isn’t fair.
So, how do you enjoy life when you know that the cards are stacked against you? How do you make sense of a grand and complex universe that operates outside of your understanding?
You live with intention… like my grandpa did. No Goodbyes. Just Good Memories.
Hailing frequencies closed, sir.
