John J. Irwin: A Life Changed in an Instant
The morning of September 8, 2022, began as unremarkably as any other for John J. Irwin. He kissed his wife Emily goodbye, helped his daughter Sophie pack her stuffed bunny into her backpack, and loaded their suitcases into the trunk. Emily and Sophie were flying to Colorado Springs to visit Emily’s parents. John couldn’t take the time off work—quarterly reports, end-of-year projections—so they decided on a quick three-day trip without him.
He never imagined it would be the last time he would see them alive.
At 11:07 a.m., a regional jet operated by a small carrier lost contact with air traffic control. Thirty-two minutes later, it vanished from radar. News broke that the plane had gone down in a remote area of the Rockies. John was still in a meeting when his phone rang. He declined it. When it rang again, then a third time, he stepped out and answered. It was Emily’s father.
“There’s been an accident,” he said, voice trembling. “Her plane… they think it crashed.”
John drove home on autopilot, numb. He kept the news off, refusing to believe anything until it was confirmed. But the confirmation came quickly and brutally. Wreckage was located on a wooded slope near Telluride. There were no survivors.
Emily and Sophie were gone.
In the weeks that followed, John existed in a fog. He didn’t cry at first. He didn’t sleep. He barely ate. What struck him most was the silence. The house, once alive with Sophie’s laughter and Emily’s music playing while she cooked dinner, was now filled with a deafening quiet. Sophie’s room remained untouched, her favorite books stacked beside her bed, a half-colored drawing taped to the wall.
Grief is not linear, nor does it obey any rules. For John, it was a tidal wave that ebbed and returned with crushing force. One moment he could fold laundry or respond to a work email, and the next he would be on the floor of the kitchen, weeping into a dish towel that still smelled faintly of lavender—the scent Emily used in the laundry.
He tried therapy. At first, he could hardly speak during the sessions. His therapist, a soft-spoken woman named Dr. Reilly, sat with him in silence, letting him hold his pain without having to explain it. Gradually, he opened up—not all at once, but in fragments. The panic attacks. The anger. The guilt. The profound loneliness.
He started writing letters to Sophie and Emily. At first, they were short: “I miss you.” “Why did you leave?” “Come back.” Then they became longer, more reflective. He wrote about how the garden was overrun with weeds because Emily had the green thumb, how Sophie would have started first grade that fall. He wrote about how he was scared he might forget the sound of their voices.
One year later, John stood on the rocky hillside where the wreckage had been found. A small memorial plaque had been placed there with the names of all 41 passengers and crew. He brought two sunflowers—Emily’s favorite—and a small plush bunny like the one Sophie always carried.
He didn’t come looking for closure—he no longer believed in that word. But he came to mark the passage of time, to acknowledge the pain, and to speak their names into the wind.
“I love you,” he said, the wind tugging at his jacket. “I will always love you.”
Healing, he would later say, wasn’t about forgetting or moving on. It was about learning to carry the weight. Some days, the weight felt impossible. Other days, it was simply a part of him, like the scar tissue formed around a broken bone.
He began volunteering with an organization that supports families affected by aviation disasters. He met others who had suffered similar losses—mothers, siblings, children—and found solace in their shared sorrow. They didn’t speak in clichés. They didn’t try to fix each other. They just listened. Sometimes that was enough.
John eventually returned to work, though he reduced his hours. He adopted a dog, a quiet retriever named Molly who would curl up beside him on the couch. He started gardening, finding some peace in the dirt and roots, a small way to connect to Emily. He planted sunflowers every spring.
Loss had changed him irreversibly. He was no longer the man who kissed his wife goodbye on that sunny morning. But he was still here. He was still breathing. And though the life he had once dreamed of was gone, he was building something new—not in its place, but alongside its memory.
Some nights, he still dreamed of them. In those dreams, Sophie was laughing, Emily was smiling, and the world was whole again.
He would wake up with tears on his cheeks, whisper “Thank you,” and hold those dreams like precious gifts.
Because love, even in loss, never leaves.
Leave a Reply