SouthShoreNow.ca

Love lost and found in Nova Scotia

Lisa Brown
Lighthouse staff

 COUNTY - Peggy Coburn kissed her husband's name etched in stone at Bayswater last week. She touched it and felt warmth, as she has so often in Nova Scotia in the past year.

 For Peggy, this is more than the place where Richard died just weeks after their 10th anniversary. It's a place where she found the strength to go on living.

 The American woman was one of hundreds of relatives of the victims' of Swissair Flight 111 who returned last week to mark the first anniversary of the crash. Like so many others, she came not only to mourn her loss, but also to celebrate the compassion and love she's found here.

 She discovered that genuine caring during her first trip to Nova Scotia last September. Since then she's experienced it again and again.

 Like the morning of September 1. She looked out her bus window and saw six police officers beside the road. They were standing at attention saluting the 24 buses of family members travelling to the interment service at Bayswater.

 Then, as she walked up the path to where the unidentified remains of the victims were buried, she found herself flanked on both sides by search and rescue volunteers forming an honour guard.

 "There they were once again for me," Peggy said. "I felt their love in such a real way, like really feeling something going into my heart from their hearts, a real human connection like I felt every time I came here."

 She remembered being told that family members would have an opportunity to speak at some point during the day. She wrote down her thoughts on a piece of paper.

 "I felt it was so important. It was a physical thing coming to me. What they were giving me, I didn't want it wasted. They had to know they gave me something," Peggy said.

 That afternoon, arriving at the Whalesback dedication where she was again met by hundreds of volunteers who'd helped in countless ways last year, she asked officials if she could speak. She needed to tell Nova Scotians what they've done for her, how they've given her strength and comfort to move on with her life.

 "All I need to do is remember and it's there forever. What a gift," she said.

 She learned later that the prearranged opportunity for families to speak was after the dedication, so she repeated her message at Peggy's Cove, hoping more people would hear and understand.

 Peggy's experience in Nova Scotia in the past year has changed her life, the way she sees her fellow man. Even going through a grocery check-out in New York City where she now lives, she views the clerk in a new way - as a person who sleeps in a bed and brushes her teeth and lives a life beyond what Peggy and other shoppers see.

 Early Thursday, Peggy went by boat to the crash site with some other families, then on to Shearwater where the investigation into the cause of the crash continues.

 "I was just thinking how fascinated Richard would be by all this stuff. He would have loved it," she said, particularly the 3-D animation, which was his field of expertise.

 Then it was on to the commemorative gathering at the World Trade and Convention Centre where more than 700 family members mingled with over 1,000 people involved in the aftermath of the disaster. Peggy wanted an opportunity to thank them, but felt shy walking into a big crowd of people she didn't know.

 "But it happened," she said later. "I actually spoke to quite a few people, with my brother, and we told them how we felt.

 "It gave me a lot of peace that anyone who might be handling Richard's remains or his things, it was okay, it was being done with love. I could really relax," she said. "That was really important to tell them and how it changed me as far as me feeling connected to people.

 "What they did was beyond heroic," Peggy continued. "When you save someone's life, you're a hero. When they went out to save lives, they were on their way to becoming heroes. And when there was no one to save and they continued to work, they were really superheroes, because there was no reward. They were just, without knowing me or Richard or the family members of the other victims, they were loving us and doing something really incredible for us. I wanted to tell them that."

 She also wanted people to somehow get to know Richard through her, to help them get beyond the horrible sights they witnessed and gruesome tasks they performed and see the people who died.

 "That's all they know of Richard and these other victims. It's that little pinhole in a piece of paper," Peggy said. "If they could rip the paper open a little bit, you know the pinhole will always be there for me too with my grief, but you can open up and expand that vision and I have that expansion. I have that expansion because I have my memories, I'm living with the legacy of his three children, I'm living every day as a tribute to him.

 "They don't have that to expand the pinhole of what they saw, that's all they can flash back to," she added. "I don't know how to put it in words that I don't want them to only look through that pinhole I want them to at least know that there's a bigger picture to look at even though they don't know the people."

 Peggy says she's doing well a year after the tragedy, which she attributes to the tremendous support she's received.

 "So many people knew about it, so many people reached out to me, prayed for me. I don't think that I would be doing well at all if it was any other way," she said.

 "I'd give anything to have him back, but I vowed that I will live my life as a tribute to him so I have to be really good now. It would only be right for me to live my life and enjoy my life and try really hard to move forward and live the best life I can. He would want that for me."

 It helps that she knows Richard died happy. The epitaph on his grave is carpe diem, or seize the day. It's the way they lived and the way they made important decisions.

 "He died with no regrets. There was nothing that he wanted to try, no dream that he wanted to go after, that he didn't move toward," she said.

 Peggy is also content because part of her husband will remain in Nova Scotia, a place he would have loved. When she visited here for the American Thanksgiving in November, she stayed in Blandford with Lamont and Marilyn Publicover. Now, they are like a second family to her.

 "They were such warm, nice, loving, sharing people that I just felt totally connected to them. I'll never just drift away from them. I feel a very strong connection," she said.

 It was Lamont, or Monte, who first showed her the site at Bayswater that later became the resting place for the unidentified remains.

 "That really feels personal to me. This is actually our place because Monte found it and they're just down the road and Marilyn said she wants to take care of them."

 For Peggy's brother Fred Newman, Nova Scotia is equally important. It was here, he says, through the goodness of the people that he came to believe in God.

 He came to Nova Scotia with Peggy last September following Richard's death. He laid flowers in the water at Peggy's Cove as she watched, but found himself almost overcome by his own grief. He started to cry, but forced himself to stop.

 "I was supposed to be her rock," he recalled.

 A rabbi told him to go ahead and weep, but Fred explained that he couldn't because his sister needed him. A Mountie standing nearby overheard him.

 "All of a sudden somebody taps me on the shoulder. I turn around and it's this big, strapping policeman, the kind of person you want to have as a cop," he remembered.

 "As I turn around, there are four of them and they have their arms around each other, blocking between me and my two sisters. They turn to me and they say to me, 'Your sister can't see you now. It's okay to cry.' I'm going to take that to my grave with me."