The office air-conditioning broken, the boss releases us from work at noon on Friday, July 23rd. Happy to get a jump on the weekend, I decide to drive to lunch at one of my old East Dearborn haunts, the M & M Cafe, and on the way over, I happen to hear a report of a Cessna crashing into Lake Michigan about ten o'clock that morning. The pilot, co-pilot and three passengers, including a cancer patient being transported to the Mayo Clinic, are all missing as of the time of the report.

I have my whitefish lunch and drive home. Posting to my blog the following day, on the completely unrelated subject of the Royal Oak Parking Gestapo, I remain oblivious to the fact that my old college sweetheart, Irene ne'e Iseminger, was on board that doomed aircraft.

I am online Sunday morning when the AOL headline piques my interest. It seems a letter was recovered from the crash: the doomed passengers' parting message to kith and kin. The story sounds too poignant to ignore. That's when I see her name.

I'd fallen hard for her. In the back of my mind, I thought some day, innocently, perhaps over coffee at her hometown's greasy spoon, we could relive old memories.

Thirty years are like the twinkling of an eye. They buried her today.