Mother of ISS crew member dies and memories come rushing back
Posted by Kirk M on 20 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: Life as a veteran
Daniel Tani, an astronaut currently working as a crew member of the International Space Station, recently received news of the death of his mother. I suggest you read the article if you haven’t already and there’s plenty more news items about this as you might belive so there was really no reason to post this here, except for one…
Things are still status quo at the station and Daniel is continuing to perform his duties with no break in schedule.
In my way of thinking and from my past experience all I can say is–of course he is. What else would he do?
The above statement may seem a bit cold and harsh but the fact is when I first read that article my whole being suddenly cried out to him for a moment as memories came flooding back in startling clarity which I quickly pushed back where they belonged as soon as I regained some modicum of control. It was one of those moments where a few seconds seem more an hour as I saw every look on every shipmates face that I had ever known as they received a "FamilyGram" telling them that one of their loved ones had had an accident, been hospitalized, passed way or simply to state that the poor bastard no longer had a family to come home to at all. And here they were, a 1000 miles from nowhere and fathoms beneath the surface of the ocean and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
And so they kept going. No choice in the matter. In the end it took it’s toll but you have to admire the man (or woman) who could receive news like that, keep his head on straight and truck right along without a break. And by the way…we had the same option that the crew members of the ISS currently have–whether or not to be informed of events like this while in space (at sea). I don’t know about the astronauts up there but I do know it would amaze some folks these days on how many of us chose to be informed regardless of the type of personal news we might have received.
And most of us did. And all of us kept on going.
Carry on, Daniel…Carry on.
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