I still remember when my father went home to be with the Lord, and I hadn't seen him in over a year and a half since I had moved from NY to NC...
When I 1st saw him in the casket, he didn't look like my father, he looked like my little Italian Grandfather! I was almost shocked, I even told my mother, "That's not my Dad, that's GrandDad"! But, like David...I looked for something I knew was him...I looked at and touched my father's very large hands..
then I KNEW it was him. That distingishing trait that I knew so well. He was a very large man before he got sick and had lost a lot of weight and even height after I moved south. It was very strange. Almost surreal if you will.
When I look at Titanic as she is now...and how she looked before, even with the black and white photos... I still get that eerie feeling. So many people died with her. So many souls were lost. Now she is just a shell, as my father was just a shell when I looked at him for the last time. The real man, his soul, was no longer there. The vessel that carried him had served it's purpose and he moved on.
I know that Titanic still had purpose. But her soul still lives on in all of us.... on this board...
in our books and videos, most of all, in our hearts. Just as my dad will never leave my heart, neither will Titanic and her story and her people she carried. The men that worked so hard and diligently to construct her and bring her to life. I can imagine that it was almost like losing a child to those workers.
Out of her loss, came many new regulations and laws that would help to prevent what had happened to Titanic and her people, from happening to others.
Because of her, many lives have been saved at sea.
I know that our system is not perfect, and the sea has a hunger all it's own and many are still lost, but I like to think that Titanic started a new respect for human life in 1912.
Was it Jack Thayer that said that life began for him on 14 April 1912?
Just my thoughts....
Beverly