Your last letter home.

Today I flew from Asheville to Atlanta, arriving at noon. Starting at 1pm, I tried to get to Washington, D.C. to give a speech, but a comedy of errors awaited me: We boarded, but weather in D.C. caused the first delay, even though I heard three other flights to D.C. board and take off in the time I waited at Gate A5 after the pilot let us off the plane. Was it really a weather delay? Why did the other planes get to leave?

We reboarded the plane and sat on the runway for another few hours. Then because of the new "three hour" rule in which an airline can't hold passengers on a plane for more than three hours, we were all told to deplane but stay near the gate.

1pm became 5pm. We boarded again and left the gate. We were given a 6:52pm clearance to take off but at 6:47pm, the pilot announced that the Atlanta airport had been shut down because of wind shear. We sat on the runway some more, then–because of the three hour rule–we went back to the gate. But we couldn't get to the gate because, as the pilot announced, incredulously, there was lightening within five miles of the airport and they couldn't allow workers onto the tarmac to bring us into the gate, though we were just feet from it.

So we sat in eyeshot of the gate for another hour or more. All the while, until my phone battery died, I was getting updates on our injured cat, Monkey, who died today in surgery.

When the door was opened again, I left. I decided to try again tomorrow.

And none of that drama matters.

None of it.

Because when I got to my airport hotel to wait until 4am to try again, I received a message that during my airport Sturm und Drang, a dear wonderful amazing friend had been talking to the choir director at her church in Asheville about how excited she was to make costumes for the upcoming production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" when she suddenly fell to the ground. The choir director, stunned, thought she had fainted.

But she had died. Just like that, in the middle of a sentence, gone.

Earlier as I had sat in the A Terminal watching soldiers walk by in camouflage, I had wondered to myself what our lives would be like if every single time we walked out our door, we would say goodbye as if we might never see our family, our friends, again. I have taken to thanking soldiers and shaking their hands and learning their names as they leave–today it was Private Doug Lewis I met in Terminal A, his reality making my inconvenience a pittance.

And now Celeste Rast is gone, a woman so full of life it seems impossible she would die. It had never occurred to me that she would.

Celeste left a sum of money to be used at her death specifically to purchase champagne to drink in celebration of her. She told me about it recently when I went over for dinner to meet her son, Richard. Celeste, I am toasting you in my Atlanta airport hotel with a sweet tea, champagne to follow when I get home.

Listen and read along as you listen to this last letter home from a soldier for whom it was his last. What would you write in your last letter home? Write it.

US Army Pfc. Jesse Givens died in Iraq in the service of his country on the first of May, 2003, in his 34th year. He wrote this letter to his wife Melissa, his five year-old son Dakota (nicknamed 'Toad') and his unborn child Carson (nicknamed 'Bean'). He asked Melissa not to open the envelope unless he was killed. 'Please, only read it if I don't come home,' he wrote. 'Please put it away and hopefully you will never have to read it.'

Lyrics:

"I searched all my life for a dream and I found it in you. I would like to think that I made a positive difference in your lives. I will never be able to make up for the bad. I am so sorry. The happiest moments in my life all deal with my little family. I will always have with me the small moments we all shared. The moments when you quit taking life so serious and smiled. The sounds of a beautiful boys laughter or the simple nudge of a baby unborn. You will never know how complete you have made me….You opened my eyes to a world I never dreamed existed….

Do me a favor, after you tuck [the children in], give them hugs and kisses from me. Go outside look at the stars and count them. Don't forget to smile."