CLEVELAND — On March 22, 1992, a commercial airliner en route to Cleveland crashed after takeoff, killing 27.
One of those passengers was Cyrus Holder, of Cleveland. Sadly, he left behind a wife and three children.
30 years later, his widow Deborah says she still sees her husband in her dreams. They are vivid and comforting even after so many years have passed by.
"None of the dreams are ever bad or frightening," she told us. "It's just a friendly smile or two."
REMEMBERING FLIGHT 405: 30 Years later, a survivor reflects
Holder says she often dreams of her late husband's smile, and that same smile radiates from her wedding album.
"I was looking forward to a bright and happy future," she said.
Holder is the first to tell you their future was cut much too short. On that March day, Cyrus would board USAir Flight 405 and never walk off.
"The grief isn't over," Deborah admitted. "It just changes. It morphs into something comfortable, but it's still there."
Holder says she still thinks about the anguish her husband went through in his final moments of life.
"His mind must have been racing, and [he wasn't] able to do anything about it, to be free to come out of this thing alive," she said. "His seatbelt jammed and he couldn't get out of his seat. He might have lost consciousness for a while, but ultimately what killed him was he drowned he drowned because he couldn't get out of seat.
"That haunted me really badly for a number of years. It was not easy trying to explain to two 11-year-olds that their dad was never coming home again. The days and weeks after that were very difficult, very difficult."
Lucinda Holder is the oldest of Cyrus' three children. She was 21 years old when he died.
"I couldn't believe it at first," she remembered, "and then I was just questioning like, 'How could this happen?'"
Cyrus will live on in Deborah's dreams and continue to appear with his perfect smile, the same one that lives on in these wedding day pictures. Her faith and her memories help to calm her through the turbulence that life sometimes brings.
"After 30 years of grieving someone that you love deeply, it gets to a point where you manage it," she said, "but there's still a part of you that’s stuck in the past. I made it through somehow.
"I miss him. I still miss him."