In light of the critical world events taking place in the news, I know many of you are anxious to know more about my dogs. 

I’ll start with Marigold, our blind coonhound. Right now, Marigold is barking outside.

It’s five o’clock in the morning and the whole neighborhood can hear Marigold. The whole neighborhood always hears Marigold. The whole neighborhood loves us. 

And even though I stand outside, barefoot, saying, “SSSHHH! GO POTTY!” Marigold ignores me and sniffs the backyard, smelling each individual blade of grass until she finally selects the same peeing location she has used for the last 13,290 consecutive mornings. 

The baying voice of a coonhound is hard to miss. It is a sustained low tenor, powerful enough to change the migratory patterns of waterfowl. 

The strangest things excite her. She is always getting worked up, for example, whenever anyone says “Alright.”

We don’t know how this started. 

We think, perhaps, “Alright” is a verbal cue we usually say the moment before we get up to feed the dogs.

“Alright!” someone might say, rising off the sofa. 

Either way, this word has been embedded in Marigold’s consciousness. Which makes it challenging to, for example, have a simple conversation.

Because the moment you utter the word, “alright,” tiny bits of ceiling plaster start falling like rain and many of the neighbors are already putting their houses on the market. 

We have two other dogs, of course. Thelma Lou, bloodhound, who weighs upwards of hundred pounds, stands seventeen hands tall, with paws the size of Volkswagens. She is Marigold’s Seeing Eye Sister. 

Marigold follows Thelma everywhere, keeping close beside her, imitating Big Sister. Whenever Thelma sits on the sofa, Marigold sits on the sofa. Whenever Thelma barks, Marigold barks. Whenever Thelma rolls around on a dead squirrel carcass in the backyard, Marigold helpfully brings the carcass into the kitchen for future use. 

Also, we have Otis,…

The nursing home had a piano. An instrument last tuned sometime during the Cold War. 

Staffers wheeled residents into a semi-circle. Nurses faced the piano toward an audience of chairs, roller walkers, and oxygen canisters. 

A middle-aged guy sat at the piano. The middle-aged guy plays by ear. He can’t read music because as a kid he was too obsessed with girls to practice “Hot Cross Buns” under the weight of Mrs. Downing’s glaringly sinister eyes.

“Any requests?” he said. 

The elderly people did not move. Nobody spoke. They stared into abysmal nothingness. 

“HELP!” shouted one elderly woman, for no reason at all. 

One of the nurses said, “They really like the hymns.” 

Piano Guy has been playing in church since boyhood. He knows hymns. When the first melodic phrase of “Old Rugged Cross” began, the room erupted to life. 

Surprisingly, the voices were not old. Neither were they dry and crackly. They were young. And strong. They knew every word. 

The next tune was “Victory in Jesus.” The room sounded like it was going to come apart

at the joists. They knew every stanza. 

A few of the ladies were even clapping in rhythm. 

“Those ladies are Pentecostals,” explained one elderly woman, using the same tone you might use to describe someone as an “Amway salesperson.”   

The next hymns were “Because He Lives,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” “Leaning On The Everlasting Arms,” and “How Great Thou Art.”

When they sang “I’ll Fly Away,” the entire room sounded like it might just do that. 

One man sat slumped in his chair. But his voice was so robust, so pure, the pianist could feel his dental fillings vibrating. 

“That man was a Church of Christ songleader,” explained an elderly woman. “We call him ‘The Singer.’ Whenever you walk past his room, you hear him singing.” 

The concert ended at 4:30 p.m., because it was suppertime. Chairs wheeled away. Residents tottered…

To the three servicemen who died in a midair collision on Wednesday in Washington DC. I’m sorry. 

I’m sorry for everything. Not just the tragedy itself. I’m sorry for all the crap that came after. All the fussing and fighting. The postulating. For all the disrespect to your memory. 

I’m sorry for the suits on TV, pointing fingers and placing blame. I’m sorry for the uneducated keyboard warriors, sitting behind laptops, violating your memory by offering excremental opinions on what you “should have done,” or “why this happened.” 

In fact, I’m sorry for the millions of people online who participated in disgusting trajectory. Who leave comments on social-media posts about this catastrophe, about your alleged roles in it, and who offer up their own political rants.

As if politics has anything to do with the precious life you lived. 

These people are talking out of their rearmost orifices. 

And so, to the Army pilot who remains unnamed. To the other pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 2, Andrew Eaves, from Brooksville, Mississippi. And to crew chief and

Georgia native, Ryan O’Hara. We all owe you an apology. 

Because we have all accidentally partaken in watching your memory get smeared by a bunch of buttheads with microphones and Twitter/X accounts.  

Following the disaster, Officer Eaves’s wife wrote: 

“We ask that you pray for our family and friends and for all the other families that are suffering today. We ask for peace while we grieve.”

Peace while she grieves. That’s what she wanted. That’s what we should have given her. But we Americans didn’t.

We Americans are taking to social media like droves of technological drunks, gorging ourselves on “insights” and “expert opinions.” And the noise we are creating fosters anything but peace. 

So, to Sam Lilley, a pilot on American Airlines flight 5432. To the 64 souls aboard the civilian airliner. To the rescue workers, first responders, and emergency crews who…

Sixty passengers. Four crewmembers. Sixty-four people.

That’s all I heard the reporter say.  

I turned on the TV to see disaster. A plane went down in DC. The reporters were saying lots of words.

Mostly, filler words. Meaningless information. Keep the conversational ball moving. Keep talking even if it doesn’t make sense. No dead air. 

But all I heard was: “There were sixty-four people aboard the aircraft.”  

Sixty-four. 

Sixty-four people. That’s 64 families. That’s 64 grieving moms and dads. Sixty-four bereaved brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, sons, daughters, friends, coworkers, bosses. Sixty-four pets maybe, still waiting at the windowsill. 

The plane left Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita. Bound for Washington DC. A quick flight. Two hours and 45 minutes, max. 

The flight was almost over. Sixty passengers would have been gathering up their crap. Shoving books into backpacks. Using the john one last time. Killing the last of their complimentary coffees. 

Crewmembers might have been collecting final remnants of garbage, flashing professional smiles to passengers. In the cockpit, they would

have been relaxed since the airport was just ahead. 

BOOM. 

The plane collided with a US Army Blackhawk helicopter. Midair. Above the midnight water of the Potomac River. And it was all over. 

The resulting scene was scary. Like a bad dream. Emergency lights as far as the eye could see. Ambulances, fire trucks, police cruisers, rescue watercraft galore. Hundreds of first responders, diving into icy water to find survivors. The Ptomac looked like a boat parade. 

A guy driving home saw the whole thing happen. 

“Initially, I saw the plane and it looked fine. Normal. It was right about to head over land, maybe 120 feet above the water…” 

He saw the plane bank right. Almost 90 degrees. 

“I could see the underside of it. It was lit up a very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it” and then…

She’s 19. Beautiful. Violent red hair. And smart. Morgan is one of those rare humans who honestly thinks math was not invented by Satan. 

The girl climbs into my truck, buckles herself in.

“Hey,” she says. Fresh-faced and happy. Slightly out of breath. The flushed cheeks of youth. 

I like that she feels so at home in my truck. 

She’s got big plans in life. Pre-med student. Wants to be a doctor. Maybe. Or a nutritionist. Perhaps. Or someone whose job is to shop at Target all day with unlimited stacks of cash. Maybe she’ll be all those things. 

Who knows. Who cares. Doesn’t matter right now. Because she’s at that age where she isn’t expected to know exactly what she wants to be. It’s a big world out there and she’s allowed to change her mind as often as she wants. 

Technically, she shouldn’t be here right now. Here in my passenger seat. Namely, because last month they were planning her funeral. Literally. They were choosing ceremony music. Choosing guest speakers. Choosing photos. 

She was in a hospital

bed, too weak to open her eyes. Or speak. Malnourished. Unable to walk. Her gastroparesis complications are many. 

“I finally came to the place where I was done fighting. I was praying for God to let me die.” 

There is a small tear in her eye. And in mine. Nineteen-year-old girls aren’t supposed to pray to die.  

“It’s not that I wanted to die,” she explains. “It’s just, I’ve just been fighting for so long. I was praying to go to heaven.”

Doctors kept fighting. They tried new treatments. New medications. New everything. Now she’s on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN), which feeds her directly through her bloodstream, bypassing her digestive system altogether. It’s a form of life support. 

Thanks to TPN, suddenly, she could move again. Suddenly she wasn’t sleeping all day. Some of her muscle mass came back. Doctors…

Angels aren’t real. They can’t be. It just doesn’t make sense. How can a rational human with a working brain believe in invisible celestial creatures who all resemble Michael Landon? 

People will make fun of you if you believe in angels.

At least that’s what the young woman thought. There were no such things as angels. Case closed.  

The young woman was driving on a desolate backroad. Going home. A college student. Working on her second degree. A hard skeptic. Educated beyond her intelligence. 

The year was 1974. Paul Harvey was playing on her radio. She wasn’t a Harvey fan, but it was either him or the pop music of ‘74. Such as “Seasons in the Sun.” Or, God help us, “The Way We Were.” 

The young woman was thinking about her mom. Her mom was crazy. Super religious. A big believer in angels. Ceramic angel crap all over the house. Angel coffee-table books. Angel toilet paper holders.  

The young woman’s car hit a patch of ice on the highway. She lost control and collided

with a tree.

The crunching of metal. The twisting of steel. Her vehicle contorted around the trunk of an oak. Game over.  

She was there for a long time, pinned in the driver’s seat. Nothing but the silence of a rural highway to keep her company. 

That's when she heard someone saying her name. It was a man’s voice. Soft and kind. He opened her mangled door. He helped her out of the smoldering wreckage. 

She doesn’t remember anything about him except for one thing. He was wearing a Beatles T-shirt. John, Paul, George, and Ringo were staring back at her, dressed in full Sgt. Peppers regalia. Ringo always looked so sad. Poor Ringo. 

In a few moments, she was lying against the guardrail. The guy was stroking her hair as she fell in and out of consciousness. 

“You’re going to be okay,”…