The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy - my response

This story spoke to me in many different ways.  I had all sorts of feelings as I moved through it.  First, I really like the author's use of commas.  He had long sentences (usually), and he separated them with many many commas.  It really gave the story a sense of choppiness, since when I read a comma, it's like a pause. But I think that's the point of this story.  A sense of choppiness.

I have a profound sense of sadness when the author described the man with the blue-eyed daughter and what he thought about when his daughter died.  How he had done everything for her, invested so much in her.  He had "stitched" together this life that was now 24 and about to take a job.  And now she is gone.  How deep would your loss be when you thought about not just this person whom you loved so deeply, but about how much you had given up for the life of this person - and now it's all just gone.  I don't blame him for losing it.

As with the man described above, I like how he really invests in every aspect of the story - the town near which the plane crashed, some of the people on the plane and those they were leaving behind, the pilot and his wife, the medical examiner.  It's like, every semi-important character had some kind of background - some more than others - but it really gave the story depth to know the stories of each of these people.

I've noticed a theme with many of the stories we read.  Many have a thread that weaves throughout each of them.  Something that is repetitive and brings the reader back to square one so the reader doesn't go spiraling off and miss the point.  In the story about that woman's death in surgery, it was the "pop, pop, pop."  In this story, it was the green lighthouse.  The author brought it up frequently throughout the story.  Like, here is home base.  Come back to it and don't get lost in the sorrow.  It really symbolizes an anchor for the people in the story, the people out to sea, fishing out dead bodies.  For the people who were trying to find the town, or for those who lived in it.  This lighthouse was where everything began, it was the identity of this town.

And for this story, it is also the identity.  When everything else has changed - so many people dead, so many lives touched - the lighthouse remains.  It was there before, it was there throughout, and it is there after.  It almost gives the feeling that life does go on, despite great tragedy, some things remain the same, and there is a sense of comfort in that.