Saturday

Today is the actual inactivation ceremony.  I decided yesterday that I wasn't going to attend, mostly because of the anticipated traffic.  Imagine another 8000 people on the highway trying to get off at the base, not to mention the parking.  The driving down here is somewhere between frustrating and an accident waiting to happen. The only roads I've driven are 5 lanes wide and no one seems to know that they have a turn signal on their steering column. Impatience runs rampant.  Horns are blowing before you can get your foot off the brake and onto the gas pedal.  I'm so thankful I don't live here.
The local NBC TV station is carrying the inactivation live on their website so I'm going to watch it this afternoon.  The most meaningful part of this journey for me was the actual tour of the ship.  I needed to walk where my husband walked, see where he worked, ate meals and slept for 6 months. The stories that my tour mates shared w/me on Thursday gave me so much incite into what life was like for the men, especially the men involved in the tragic fire.  It's helping to heal whatever questions, wounds and/ghosts were still there, hiding beneath the surface in my mixed up brain and broken heart.
I saw on the news this morning that there was a special memorial ceremony yesterday on the flight deck for the men who survived the fire.  I never could have made it though that one.  There were shots of men weeping.  So many memories.  I know that a widow of one of the men lost was going to be there.  God bless her.  She was just a baby when that all happened, like me, and she went through hell.
This morning the breakfast area in my hotel was filled w/Navy vets.  Nice to see that so many men have kept in touch and are sharing this reunion.  They're all old men now by today's standards.   Funny we don't think of ourselves as old, except maybe when we look in the mirror first thing in the morning and see our gray hair, puffy eyes and droopy faces :)