God's Spotlight

When President Reagan's coffin was rested in the center of the Capitol Rotunda, the setting sun cast an ethereal glow on the American flag draped there. I thought of his farewell letter to the people of the nation in which he cheerfully told us that he may be heading into the sunset of his life, but that a bright dawn for the nation was always ahead. Members of the Air Force sang "America the Beautiful" with all those gorgeous acoustics raining down on Nancy and the Congress.

Tear-apart moments: The boots--his own boots-- set backwards in the saddle of riderless horse. Nancy laying her left cheek against the coffin. Dan Rather intoning, "The caisson rolls." The missing man formation, so devastatingly reminiscent of Columbia's memorial service. A Reagan family friend reporting that Nancy has been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and affection, saying, "I thought people had forgotten all about Ronnie." The Capitol evacuating in a panic when a plane carrying the governor of Kentucky was momentarily misidentified. A woman my age wiping away tears as she viewed the coffin. JellyBelly.com posting a tribute. The crowd breaking into applause as the procession went by. Silence so heavy outside the Capitol that the only sound was the occasional scrape of the hooves of the jittery riderless horse. Nancy's frail white hand waving from the window of the limousine. A row of Boy Scouts saluting. "Hail to the Chief" greeting the President on each step of the journey. The cover of Peggy Noonan's When Character Was King draped over a crowd barrier. (Someday, my words will touch people, too.) A Secret Service agent telling a news anchor that Reagan actually had to tone down his riding because his agents couldn't keep up with him. (He who loved to quote Churchill's "There's nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse" died just a few hours before the nation focused its exhausted joy and optimism on the back of a single colt in the Belmont. This was no accident.)

Nick the NASA Poobah and I held a two-hour Irish wake via telephone last night. He administered a much-needed two hour pep talk as together we watched the leaders of the era walk across our C-SPAN screens. "This week I realized," he told me, "that this is the first time the President will be able to see me doing my job. And that carried me all day." And I am sure that the Challenger seven have by now thanked him for holding us together.

He chose his time. His hand may now rest on the backs of the President and the nation in a way that it couldn't while he was still bound on Earth.

One of my readers informed me that since I grew up during his greatest works as President, I therefore had a child's understanding of him. Yes, in a way; it instilled a childlike trust in and admiration for who a President is and should be. But when I became a woman and then a political science major, those concepts were shaded with a grown-up's understanding of the moral underpinnings and nuances of what he did for the nation, for the world.

Don't be sad this week. Be grateful that God once again gave us exactly who we needed, exactly when we needed him. It is to be celebrated. He is to be celebrated.