by Hannah Luce
I hate my skin because it reminds me. Reminds me of their dreams unrealized, of what they will never become. Because of me? I fear it is. I search my mind again and again for things I could have done differently. It was their idea to travel to Council Bluffs, but what if I had never mentioned my concerns about Teen Mania? What if they’d never met me? What if I’d suggested we drive instead of fly? Would they still be alive today? So many what ifs with no answers.
My body feels as if it’s melting inside out from my wrath. I am frozen there, on the shower floor, and I begin to shiver, even though my skin is as blazing hot as if I were being stuck with a branding iron. Pulling my knees toward my chest, I lie there, in a fetal position, weeping wildly. I try to stifle my sobs with my hands, because I don’t want my parents to hear.
I hear a knock on the door. “Hannah?” It’s Mom. “Hannah, are you all right?” I almost start laughing. Am I all right? Am I all right? Of course I’m all right, Mom. I’ve lost my friends whom I loved with all my heart. My body is so ugly it makes me sick to look at it. I think I’ll never stop bleeding and I’m back living in my bedroom, not eating, not sleeping, living from flashback to flashback, and losing myself in pills and whatever else I can get my hands on to help me forget what I can’t stop remembering.
Mom opens the shower door.
“Please, Mom, go away,” I say. “Get out! This is my time!”
“Please, Hannah,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
She starts to cry. I don’t like disappointing my mom. I don’t want to see her hurt, but I can’t seem to keep from lashing out.
“Unless I fall, I don’t want you in here!” I cry. “I’ll let you know when I need you!”
“Hannah. Hannah, honey.”
“Get out! I don’t want you in here, Mom. I want to be left alone!”
The shower water beat down on me and, after a while, I was all out of tears. I was tired of being in pain, and I felt as if I wasn’t healing. Would I ever heal? Would I ever enjoy my life again? Would I ever be able to look at my own body without feeling disgusted? Once I had big dreams. I wanted to finish graduate school, travel the world, look for purpose in my life. I couldn’t imagine those dreams were possible now. I wasn’t strong enough to overcome my pain, but especially my loss. I would never get over losing my friends. I would always mourn Garrett and Austin. They were gone and my heart had a gaping hole in it. Sometimes when I tried to picture them in my mind, their faces were fuzzy. I couldn’t bear the thought of those images fading away.
I called out to my mother. It turned out that she’d been standing outside the door the whole time. She came in and wrapped a towel around me, then helped me to dress my wounds.
32
Outpatient
Sometime I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything.
—BLAINE HARDEN, ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14: ONE MAN’S REMARKABLE ODYSSEY FROM NORTH KOREA TO FREEDOM IN THE WEST
I couldn’t move any part of my body without pain, so I usually sat in my room, refusing to exert myself beyond walking to the bathroom, or taking an occasional stroll around the yard on Papa’s arm. My days consisted of watching my favorite reruns on TV, turning the pages of books I couldn’t concentrate on enough to read, and finding creative places to hide my food so Mom wouldn’t know I wasn’t eating. Sometimes I used Mom’s computer to look up things that were relevant to my recovery—for instance, post-traumatic stress syndrome, a psychological condition triggered by a terrifying event that can completely shake up one’s life. I had all of the symptoms, the flashbacks, the nightmares, the paralyzing anxiety. My parents suggested I see friends to help me get my mind off the throbbing of my wounds and the pain in my heart, but I usually refused, and even on those rare occasions when people did come to visit, I was usually so out of it I forgot they’d been there.
The only thing that could get me moving was the three times a week when I knew I had physical therapy in Dallas, and then it wasn’t the therapy that motivated me. Home was almost an hour’s drive from Dallas, so we hired livery drivers to take me to and from my therapy sessions. Those trips were my big adventures, and I really looked forward to them. I could hardly wait for the car to come so I could escape into an alternate universe, where I didn’t have to worry about bleeding on my sheets again or staining the towels Mom used to cover the furniture so I didn’t stain the wood or upholstery.
The drivers didn’t care what I did. They were an assorted bunch, some women, some men, all of them employed by workmen’s comp and using their own cars, many that looked as if they might not make it out of the driveway, much less all the way to Dallas. The drivers didn’t seem to care if I was in pain or depressed or even if I stained their backseat. They’d drive along, living their lives, and I’d just be along for the ride, enjoying their chitchat, or their quirks, or their private cell phone conversations.
Some of them were real characters. One of my regulars was a woman who I thought was a man for the longest time. She was forty or fifty, with calloused hands and chewed nails and hair that was cut into a mullet. She wore biker clothes and always the same braided leather bolo tie with a silver and gold Texas Star. Her car smelled like cigarettes and alcohol. She took the corners on those country roads like a racecar driver. I’d shut my eyes really tight and hope for the best, but it was better than being at home thinking about what was and what might have been, or feeling as if I was drowning in survivor’s guilt.
After a while I began requesting a driver named Teresa. I adored her. She was a large African American woman with an expressive face and a gleaming white smile, and she always told me stories about her kids and her grandkids. She hadn’t had an easy life, but she was always warm and cheerful and I came to really like her. To reward me after every physical therapy session, she’d drive to a McDonald’s in a ghetto part of northeast Dallas and get a stash of oatmeal raisin cookies. She’d park the car, pull out two cigarettes, one for her, one for me, and we’d sit there smoking and gorging ourselves.
“Now don’t you tell your mama what we’re doing,” she’d say conspiratorially.
“Not a chance,” I’d say, flipping my cigarette butt out the window and stuffing the last cookie in my mouth.
Then we’d be back on the road again, headed back to reality.
33
Not My Father’s God
Un-winged and naked, sorrow surrenders its crown to a throne called grace.
—ABERJHANI, THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS
“I have to go back,” I told Papa. “If there’s any chance of me getting better, I have to go to Kansas to the crash site and you have to let me go.” Six months had passed since I lost my friends. My skin was on the mend but my heart was still in pieces and I was overmedicating to cope with my grief and my guilt. My parents tried to understand, but I could tell they were becoming frustrated. Mom began saying she was caring for “drunk Hannah.” I couldn’t blame her. Half the time, I couldn’t understand my own slurred words.
Papa and my mother wanted to come with me to Kansas, but I refused to let them join me. This is something I need to do by myself, I said. Somewhere from deep within me I knew that, until I went back to the last place I was with my friends, I couldn’t begin to make peace with myself and I’d never be able to move forward. I’d always be the way I was now, an aimless and troubled soul, angry and guilt-ridden, and looking for a purpose, a reason to live.
The way I looked at it was I had four good reasons to want to die. Not a day ended when I hadn’t asked myself why I lived when those boys, who were truer and more unswerving in their faith, didn’t survive. I was torn apart about not being able to attend their funerals. That I’d never had a chance to say a proper good-bye, and I owed them that, at least. But, even more, I needed to pull myself together to be able to share their stories of heroism and courage and to take up their pursuit of working for a better world. They’d always wanted for me to find my way back to God, and I had to see if it was possible.
In the four months I’d been home from the hospital, I’d begun to think about my faith more, and I’d slowly come to the realization that even though I’d been mad at God, even forsaken God, I didn’t want a life without having faith. That didn’t mean I didn’t have doubts, or that I wasn’t still struggling with my beliefs, because I was. But I wanted to try.
• • •
I left for Kansas the week before Thanksgiving. Along the way, I stopped at a flower shop for a candle to bring with me to the cornfield. I was headed to the crash site to say good-bye to my friends, and that felt sacred to me, but I was also terrified because I didn’t know where I stood with them. I needed to find out.
My first stop was in Neodesha, a small town about ten miles south of the crash site. I’d made arrangements to meet with Fire Chief Duane Banzet at the firehouse there. Duane was one of the first responders at the crash, and he’d taken good care of me in the ambulance. He’d even taken the time to drive to Kansas City to see me in the hospital. He was kind and easy to talk to, and I had a million questions for him about things I either couldn’t remember or wanted to clarify from that day.
I got there around lunchtime. Duane greeted me with a smile and a bear hug. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Hannah,” he said, inviting me into his office. We talked a long time, hours, in fact, until late in the afternoon. How did he first hear about the crash? I asked. How long had it taken him to get there from the firehouse? What was the first thing he saw when he got there? Did he remember how I looked? What did remember about Austin? Did he know Austin was going to die? Did he think I’d make it? Did he recall how long it took for the medical transport helicopter to come? Had he talked with the two women who found us? Duane answered every question with patience and compassion. He even drew a diagram of the plane on the ground and where each of the bodies of my friends had been found. He was matter of fact yet empathetic, and I could tell that he’d been deeply moved by what he witnessed that day.
As we were talking, I looked around his paneled office. It was cozy and inviting and quiet except for the occasional staticky call that came over the scanner. Happy family pictures were scattered on the desk and credenza. I assumed the pictures were of his wife and his children. One was of a girl who looked to be about my age. “My daughter,” he said, reading my thoughts. I got the impression from the photographs that Duane had a satisfying life, but I couldn’t help noticing that his eyes looked sad. I imagined he’d seen some pretty awful things in his years of service, and he said that he had, more than his share.
Duane said he’d made it his practice never to get personally involved with the people he met on the job, but something was different with me. It had to do with something he saw in my eyes and Austin’s eyes on the day of the crash, he said. Even though he knew we were afraid and in pain, our eyes told a story of a certain kind of serenity. Duane called it “the peace of God.” I’d seen that same look in Austin’s eyes, but I hadn’t been able to identify it. My poor friend’s body had been ravaged by fire, he was in terrible pain, and I’m sure he knew he was about to die, but the look in his eyes was one of serenity and conviction. Had I witnessed the peace of God in him?
Duane told me a story from when he was fifteen years old. He was working for his grandfather and his uncle on their farm that summer, he said. They’d just finished lunch, and his uncle told him he had had a truckload of grain that needed to be unloaded for feed for the hogs.
“When my uncle went to check on the cows, I climbed up on the truck bed. I never heard my uncle come back, but the next thing I knew, the truck bed was tilting and I was sliding into the bin with the grain. I was buried alive. My mouth was packed with grain and I couldn’t breathe. I knew I was going to die, but a sense of peace came over me and I wasn’t afraid. Next thing I know, my body’s floating upward, through the stars. I was headed to Heaven.”
But his uncle brought him back. He said he heard his uncle screaming for him. He’d dug him out of the grain pile alive. He said, years later, when he became a firefighter and tragedy became a regular part of his life, he often thought about the grain accident and asked himself why he’d been spared, yet he couldn’t save a child who’d drowned or a baby who’d died from SIDS. Often, he said, he’d asked God, “Why me, and not this little two-year-old or seven-year-old or ten-year-old?” After every loss, he said, he’d be depressed for long periods of time.
“I know you’re asking yourself the same thing, Hannah,” he said. “Why, God, did You save my life? Why did You give me another chance? Why me and not Austin or Luke or Stephen or Garrett? I know you feel unworthy of being the only one who survived. But what happened isn’t your fault.”
“Why do you keep doing this job that causes you so much torment?” I asked.
Duane hesitated for a minute. “It’s what God wants me to do,” he said. “It’s not easy for us to understand why this stuff happens, but bad things happen to good people every day. God’s got a plan for you and you’ll have to ask Him what it is.” As if he knew of my struggle to hear God’s voice, he added: “Don’t expect the heavens to open up and hear Him start talking to you. It doesn’t happen that way. It’s a kind of peace that comes over you when you’re on the right path.”
“Did you ever question God?” I asked.
“Still do,” he said. “After every kid I lose I ask ‘Why?’ Never got a good answer yet. But what I do know is that the Lord wants me here to help the next person, to give someone else the second chance He gave me, not to question why He took the last one.”
“I want to keep living,” I said. “But I don’t know how.”
Duane smiled a rueful smile. “Hannah,” he said. “Your life has changed, no doubt about it, but it doesn’t have to be bad. You need to grieve the boys, to talk to them, to say ‘good-bye.’ But at some point, you’ve got to let them go and find the courage to get on with your life. That’s how you keep their memory alive.”
“Will you come with me to the crash site, Duane?” I asked.
• • •
We arrive just as the sun is dipping below the horizon. Duane understands that, although I am glad for his company, I need to take this last part of my journey alone. He points me in the direction I want to go and as he waits on the side of the gravel road, I head off through the cornfield. The only sound I hear is that of the dried cornstalks snapping under my feet. It’s too quiet and I fight off flashbacks of the plane roaring across the field and into the red oak, and all the carnage that followed.
I’m fighting the urge to turn back when I’m suddenly aware of what feels like a hand on my back. I turn, briefly, expecting to see Duane. He must have been worried about letting me walk through the field alone. But no one’s there. No one I can see. Something, it feels like a slight wind at my back, gently pushes me forward. I am not moving against my will, but, at the same time, I feel as if I’m not making the choice to go forward. I am going where I’m going. Period. I’m not frightened anymore and, strangely, my sadness has abated and I’m eager to see what’s coming. I’ve lost all concept of time and place. Then, in the blackness of night, on the ground in front of me I see the tiny, shimmering pieces of the metal left over from the plane. In a strange way, I feel as if I’m home. I lay my blanket out in front of the towering oak tree, its trunk still charred from the fire.
In the near distance, I heard the howl of a pack of coyotes and I begin to sing with them, but my song is one my sister Charity wrote for me after the crash.
And we’ll walk on holy ground,
Clothed in celestial sound
And when sorrow falls
I’m going to cry tears of joy.
I light my candle and instantly feel the presence of Garrett and Austin. Their spiritual presence is heavy, like a blanket covering me, and I can’t deny it. It’s almost as if they’re weighing me down and passing through me to prove to me, doubting Hannah, that they’re here. They’re really here. I feel joy. Complete and utter joy. “I hoped you’d be here. I knew
you would be. You’ve always been there when I needed you and I’ve never needed you more than I do now.”
I talk to them for a long while, telling them everything that, before now, I could only write in my journal. About how much I love them and how I wonder what they would think of my life now, and how I can’t promise I can go on without them, not the way they’d like for me to go on. I ask for their forgiveness and I know their response. I don’t need to see their faces or hear their voices. I just know. I just believe.
We’re happy, Hannah. Really happy. We’re where we want to be. We know we encouraged you, supported you, enriched your life. But some things you need to discover on your own. You need to be able to figure things out for yourself. You can mourn, and we love that you do, but you can’t mourn forever. You have to dance.
I think about the lyrics of my sister’s song.
. . . I’m going to dance
Oh, I will dance.
I promise them I’ll try.
After a while, I fold my blanket, collect my candle, and begin the long walk back to the gravel road where Duane is waiting. The pieces of the plane that I’d collected jingle in my pocket and I smile. The boys are okay and I will be okay, too. I know that now.
For the first time in my life I accept that sometimes I have to believe what I cannot hear and what I cannot see. The light of the moon shines on my face and I’m overtaken by a sense of tranquility, a kind of tranquility I have never felt before. And then I realize that what I’m feeling is the warmth and the tranquility of faith.
34
I’m Back
And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
—KURT VONNEGUT, PLAYER PIANO
Cameron had something on his mind. I knew my little brother better than anyone, and his face betrayed his silence. As soon as he walked into my room less than a week after my visit to the crash site, I could see he was troubled by something, really troubled. “What’s wrong, Cammy?” I asked. He hemmed and hawed and shuffled his feet a bit. I knew he wanted to say something, but he was having trouble getting the words out, so I persisted. “Really, what’s the matter?” Reluctantly, he pulled out his phone and pushed a button. “Hey that’s me!” I said, hearing my own voice. My smile faded to dismay and then embarrassment as I heard one word slur into the next. I sounded drunk and I was blabbering some kind of nonsense that even I didn’t understand. I wasn’t making any sense. My brother had recorded my voice during a conversation I’d had with my parents. The conversation was benign. It was my speech he wanted me to hear. “This is how you sound now, Hannah,” he said. His eyes bore into me as though he was looking into my soul. “This is how you sound all the time.” My mouth dropped open and Cameron shook his head and marched out of my room. To me, his march was more of a statement: “I give up, I’m done waiting for you to get better. It’s too painful. I don’t want to see you anymore, at least, not this Hannah.”