The news about the Columbia from the NASA Web site is pretty dry:

A Space Shuttle contingency has been declared in Mission Control, Houston, as a result of the loss of communication with the Space Shuttle Columbia at approximately 9 a.m. EST Saturday as it descended toward a landing at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. It was scheduled to touchdown at 9:16 a.m. EST.

According to the announcement the shuttle was traveling at 12,500 miles per hour this morning when it broke up.

We saw it take off on Jan. 16 as we drove through central Florida on the way to my grandmother's nursing home. Or rather, we saw the trails of smoke it left behind, one straight white line up into the blue sky. It lingered for a long time as we drove past the orange groves and the clear-cut swampland.

We were glad to see it, my family and I. Nobody wanted to make this drive. Grandma has been going farther and farther away from us for some time. At 94, she is receding fast.

But just for a minute, there on the highway, we all got to think about something else. We watched the sky and imagined the astronauts in the wild blue.

I left the nursing home expecting that I would never see her again.

But I never dreamed they wouldn't come back.