I remember it getting dark outside, and the strained conversation between the four of us. Grandma’s house was so full of memories it was hard for me to concentrate on the present. The place that had always brought me a feeling of belonging and home was reduced to walls and furniture.
We kept the living room lights off as the sun set. Mom and I sat beside each other on the couch staring blankly at the tree while Grandma changed her clothes. Angela hid in the kitchen until it was time to leave.
“Can’t we just stay here?” I asked Mom. I was so tired of performing. Going to a big party with your family wouldn’t make me feel any better, and it wouldn’t be fair to them if I was moping around the whole time. I knew that they would all look at us in the same disappointed way that Grandma and Angela had done. I just wanted to sit in the quiet darkness under the lights of the tree and be sad. We rarely had permission or a time in our lives to be sad.
“I think that sounds like a good idea,” Mom replied. She sniffed quietly and wiped her cheeks with her hands.
Grandma appeared from the hallway. “You ready?” she asked.
“I think we’re going to stay here, Lotus. It’s just...we’re not ready.” Mom explained.
“Oh.” Grandma sat in the recliner, obviously upset.
“You can’t stay here and hide,” Angela said, coming out of the kitchen, an edge of anger in her voice. “You can’t be selfish. David wouldn’t want you to sit here alone.”
“I don’t want to go,” I said tentatively.
“Sarah, it sucks what happens. It really does. I miss your dad too” - Angela’s voice cracked - “but you’re not gone and neither are we. Our parents all went through this, remember? They lost their dad, and the next Christmas they still showed up.”
“But it’s not the same!” I argued. I stood up from the safe spot on the couch. “They were all in their forties when Grandpa died. They had families of their own. Besides, Grandpa had cancer. We had time to know he was sick. We knew he was dying.” I took a shaky breath. “I didn’t get to say goodbye. It’s completely different.”
“They still lost their parent!” Angela shouted.
“They weren’t kids! I’m sixteen. I can’t take this.” I felt myself losing control, anger and pain coursing through my body. I wanted to scream at Angela, who still had her parents. I wanted to scream in the faces of everyone who had told me it would get easier with time, that I would be okay someday, that I would understand why this had happened when I was older. It was all bullshit. They had no idea what they were talking about, because none of them had come home from a sleepover to be told their Dad had died in a plane crash.
I went into the bathroom to wash my face and catch my breath. Mom came in a few minutes later and told me that maybe we should try to go to the party. “Angela’s right. Dad wouldn’t want us to be so sad on Christmas.” So we put aside the things we wanted for the things we thought you would want for us, hoping for a Christmas miracle that couldn’t possibly come true.
The second Christmas without you was worse than the first. Time had done nothing to improve our relationship with your family. They shied away from us, which was easy enough to do when we lived eight hours apart. Mom began to believe that because she wasn’t blood she wasn’t family any longer. I grew bitter at the cousins I had thought wouldn’t forget about me. I knew by the second Christmas that everything was coming undone.
Mom and I went to Saint Louis because we believed it was still the right thing to do. Technically, we weren’t even invited. B had left us off the guest list for their annual party, so when Mom and I showed up at their door we were met with a lot of surprised faces. We stood in the entryway with nothing more than a hostile or confused glare for a Christmas greeting. Mom took the first step into the lion’s den, daring to walk into a cluster of relatives and say hello. I remained frozen at the door until Jordan, who was maybe six at the time, pulled me by the hand into the living room and to the piano. She hopped up on the bench. “Play with me!” she said, totally engrossed in the holiday excitement. It was hard to stay melancholy while her chubby little fingers bashed on the keys. In a matter of moments we were giggling together, and I wondered if maybe there wasn’t a place for me after all.
When Jordan became bored with the piano she ran off to find us a book to read. “Wait right here,” she had instructed. While I was waiting for her to return Diana noticed me sitting at the piano.
She approached me and I stood up to hug her. Instead she crossed her arms. “It’s pretty rude to come to a party and sit in the corner the whole time. Are you just going to pout all night?” Her words made the hope stirring inside me drop with a thud to the pit of my stomach.
“I-I wasn’t hiding,” I tried to explain. I pointed over her shoulder. “Jordan is getting something for us. We were playing.” I felt my voice catch, the hiccups beginning, a precursor to ugly, unstoppable sobs. I moved past Diana and ran up the stairs, taking refuge on the bathroom floor.
I could hear the party going downstairs. Christmas tunes drifted through the vent beside me, their happy melodies making me cringe. I felt like I was the ghost, as though no one could see me. Or worse, that no one wanted to see me. It felt like no matter what I did I would be wrong. Was there a right way to live anymore?
Mom found me eventually. She opened the door and instantly burst into tears. “Do you want to go home?” she asked while she stroked my unruly hair.
I nodded. Wherever home is, please, take me there, I thought.
“I can’t understand them. It’s not you. Ok? It’s not your fault that they’re behaving like this.”
I didn’t believe her.
Mom told me to wait while she took care of some things. I wasn’t hiding before but I was certainly hiding now. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. When Mom returned Mike was with her. Of course he had been offered up to send us home.
We left the party without saying goodbye. Maybe Mom had already told everyone we were leaving. If it affected them, it didn’t show. The party continued on, my family laughing and mingling, munching on finger foods on snowflake patterned paper plates.
Mike took us back to Grandma’s first so we could pick up our suitcases. We hadn’t unpacked anything yet. After he helped us put our bags in the back of his truck he looked to my Mom. “You ready, Jan?”
“Can we make one stop first?” Mom asked.
“Where to?”
“The cemetery. We haven’t seen David’s headstone yet.”
Apparently the ground at a grave has to settle for six months before a tombstone can be placed. Then we had to wait another six months because it can’t be placed in the winter. Mom and I hadn’t thought to buy presents for each other, but we could give you one last gift. We would make sure that your tombstone was perfect.
We drove in silence to Eternal Peace. It was pitch black on the back country roads. I might have been scared to be in a cemetery at night once, but I had outgrown such pointless fears.
We were lucky to be in Mike’s truck because, for the first time in years, there were several inches of snow on the ground. He was able to climb the steep hill without sliding on the gravel road. With a little help from Mom he drove around the curve at the top of the hill and then started back down, stopping just as the road declined. He arranged the truck so his high beams lit the path to your grave.
Mom and I held onto each other’s arms as we climbed out of the truck and into the snow. What a sight we must have been, the two of us slipping and sliding down a snowy cemetery hill on Christmas Eve. As we approached your grave I got the same electric butterfly feeling that came before giving a speech at school. I did not cry.
Illuminated by the headlights we could clearly make out the shades of red and brown in the simple stone. Your name was etched in a plain type above your birth and death date. Seeing your name had little affect on me; seeing Mom’s name beside yours nearly knocked me over.
Was Mom so lost that she was already planning her death? I was too
young and too broken to know that adults often planned their deaths to relieve the burden for the family they leave behind.
I pointed at her side of the tombstone. “Why is your name there too?” I demanded in a shrill voice. Panic was rising up the back of neck. “Are you going to die?” I knew that one day I would bury Mom, but when? Would it be cancer that killed her? A heart attack? Would she live to be ninety and see her grandchildren? Would it be easier the second time around? I couldn’t stop the swirling thoughts, the terror of being an orphan. Even though Mom was standing right beside me, even though more than a decade has passed and we talk every day, there is always a part of me that is bracing myself for her death. I don’t know if I can handle another sucker punch like your plane crash, so I try to prepare for it a little bit every day to avoid being caught off guard.
“Sweetie, no. I’m not going to die. Not for a long, long time. I have the plot beside your Dad. It’s easier to put the second name on the tombstone when they make it.” She paused for a moment, staring at her name. “It is kind of creepy, now that you mention it.”
We both laughed then, releasing some of the tension of the moment. “Look,” Mom said, bending down. “Did you see the little plane?”
I bent down beside Mom to take a closer look. Under the names was a small horizon line with a sun peeking out from behind a tree. Flying just above the sun was a delicate outline of a plane.
I had scoured stores for airplane memorabilia my entire life. How could I ever train myself to stop seeing airplanes everywhere? How could I ever look at a plane and feel happy, or at the very least bittersweet, instead of feeling pain and anger? I resisted the urge to kick your tombstone that night, but I’ve visited your grave several times since then, and let’s just say I’m surprised I haven’t broken my toes. It’s just not fair, Dad. No matter how many season pass me by, what happened to you isn’t fair.
Mom started to cry as she touched the plane. She apologized to you for hurting your family on Christmas. “I’ve got to do things differently, David. I’m not doing so good without you, you son-of-a-bitch. You really messed things up.” Then she hugged me tightly to her side. “But we’ll be fine. I promise you, I’ll take care of our baby.”
Mom and I stood in silence for a few minutes more. We may have been in bad shape, but we were in bad shape together. We moved away at the same time, climbing back up the slippery hill to return home to whatever was waiting for the two of us. As Mike drove away from the cemetery I leaned my head against the cold window and stared into the heavens. A million silvery stars glittered in the inky sky, untouched by the harsh lights of the city, unaware that one day they would cease to shine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
There was a noticeable shift in Dad’s attitude once his airplane was painted. All the pieces had come together and he could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Some people dream of sports cars and beachfront condos when they retire; my dad wanted nothing more than a small farm where he could have his own runway. Seeing his plane painted brought him all the closer to his ideal life.
Dad had been working closely with a man named Jim who owned the very farm/airport that Dad dreamed of. Jim and Dad got along splendidly. You could often hear them laughing through our closed garage door. Jim worked on airplanes for a living and as far as I could tell he was Dad’s confidant in all things mechanical. There were a few bits of assembly that Dad wasn’t qualified to do and he spent many hours observing Jim at work on his plane. As soon as it was ready, the plane would be moved out to Jim’s hanger for the finishing touches.
Soon the only thing missing from the plane was the engine. Dad had spent a lot of money over the last six years of construction, but those expenses were carefully spread out over time to soften the financial blow. The engine couldn’t be bought in pieces, and as I later found out it came with a price tag of roughly $10,000.
During those six years my family never went on vacation. We barely ate out. Mom had to sneak me to the mall to buy new clothes. My parents drove used cars. Between my Dad’s frugal nature and their dedication to the plane, my parents had managed to afford everything he needed. Ordering the engine must have been difficult for Dad to justify. I have no clue where he got the money for it, as I was always under the impression that we had just enough and not a penny more.
Dad and Jim worked together to put the engine in the plane. They worked with the seriousness of actors in a bad suspense movie debating which wire to cut while the clocks tick behind them. With furrowed brows they checked their papers and measurements over and over again until they were certain the engine was secure and would, in fact, get the plane off the ground.
A wooden propeller completed the nose of the plane. With the engine and propeller in place there was no denying it: a plane had been born.
A trailer came to pick up the plane in the early spring of 2000. As I watched some men tie down the plane with straps and drive slowly away down the road I felt like I was watching a younger sibling go off to college. For most of my life I had lived with my parents and the plane. For most of my life I had listened to the sounds of a saw or a hammer, I had smelled chemicals and heard the cursing that brought the plane to life. I always knew my Dad would finish the plane someday, but someday isn’t a date to be marked on any calendar. Like most adolescents I had no concept of time. But there we were with an empty basement. We were able to park our cars in the garage again. The plane was gone and our home felt emptier than I had ever thought possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It’s (almost) funny to me how often people joke about plane crashes. Most of the time I can let their comments roll off of my shoulders because I’ve learned that my tragedy did not make the world stop turning. People aren’t being insensitive when they make these jokes in front of me, just like I’m not being intentionally cruel if I slip and call something “retarded”. I try to remember that we used to joke about plane crashes. We even joked about your plane crashing. We laughed about it once, so I really do try my best to see the black humor in the situation.
What I haven’t gotten used to are nervous fliers. I physically can’t force myself to reassure a nervous flier that everything will be okay. I’ve been on the receiving end of the one-time-in-a-million when it wasn’t okay. Sometimes people catch themselves fretting about their flight around me and apologize. Sometimes they ask me if they’re being crazy and because I am not always a nice person I will tell them that I am not the best person to ask. I sound like a bitch and I make everyone uncomfortable, but I can’t help myself.
There are more nervous fliers now than when you were alive. 9/11 did a real number to those who didn’t have a problem flying and grounded those who were already afraid.
I was seventeen when the planes hit the towers, a few weeks into my senior year of high school. Economics class had just started and suddenly the television on the wall playing the morning news was showing a smoking building. The announcements were repetitive at first: “An airplane has struck the World Trade Center.”
Some of the kids in my class turned and looked at me as the footage of the plane crashing into the building played on an endless loop. I heard a whisper. “How can she watch this?”
When the second plane hit I ran into the bathroom and vomited. Everyone, everywhere was in a haze that day. Without friends to commiserate with I walked the halls alone while countless television screens bombarded us with horrific images. For the first time in my life I was filled with irrational fear. I used the phone in one of the secretary offices to call Mom at work. She stayed on the line with me for half an hour until I was reassured that she was okay. I had no reason to fear for her safety but the energy of the day felt all too familiar. 9/11 was a day that our country collectively remembered, after decades of feeling safe, what it was like to be afraid.
Like millions of viewers I watched as New York witnessed the death of their loved ones. In a minute, whisper of a way, I knew what they were feeling. No one should ever
have to see that kind of death unfold, or be replayed to snare higher ratings. Channel 9 had done a twenty-second blurb on your death, but in that brief window they managed to put their cameras inside of the mangled wreckage, the tattered fabric lifting in the soft summer breeze.
They delivered a copy of this tape to our house by courier a month or so after it aired. You might think this is weird, but I watch this tape every so often. On the anniversaries of 9/11 we are and forever will be flooded with news clips and graphic images. I wonder if those left behind watch, desperately trying to look away but unable to avert their eyes?
When the papers came out in the days following 9/11 there were huge controversies over what was printed in newspapers. Just because we had, for the first time ever, the capabilities to record such events as they unfolded, did it mean we had the right to? I remember most the photo of a man free falling head first, already dead or moments away from death after he jumped from the burning building.
There were three other pilots who heard and saw your crash. They have a story to tell, a picture to paint of a man they didn’t know that they watched die. I have always wanted to talk to them. I want to hear them tell what it was like, how it sounded, how they felt. What they know has to be better than what I’ve imagined.
The skies were silent in the aftermath of 9/11. I listened from my bedroom window to the birds and the wind, waiting in vain to hear the buzz of a propeller. You raised me to watch for planes, you trained me to always wave them home.
My sky may be forever silenced, but I will always look up and I will always wave, just in case the plane overhead is you, trying to find your way home.
Taking Flight Page 13