Taking Flight (2 page)

For those who are afraid of flying, I can imagine how insane, reckless even, it might seem to take a child up in a tiny plane. It probably seems as dangerous as putting a kid in the car with a drunk driver. But I was never given the chance to decide for myself if flying was frightening or dangerous. Kids, at least the lucky ones, have implicit trust in their parents’ judgment on what is safe and what isn’t. When I went flying with Dad I never thought for a moment that it was an extraordinary way to spend father-daughter bonding time. I certainly didn’t think we were risking our lives.

I was probably four or five the first time Dad leaned back in his seat and told me that I was in charge. “You’re the co-pilot,” he explained over the loud whirring of the propeller. “You need to know how to handle the plane.”

I slowly worked up the nerve to grip the throttle. The slightest pull back towards me and the plane would lift up; if I pushed forward the nose dipped to the ground. I realize now that Dad was watching every single move I made; he was probably mirroring them so I only thought I was in control. But in those moments I believed I was flying.

I took my job very seriously. I had to stretch my tiny body to see over the control panels. There were many gears and switches in front of me to learn. I let Dad handle the things I didn’t understand. I imagined he was happy to have a job to do while I performed the hard work.

For all the flight time I logged, I was never allowed to take off or land. Crashes are most likely to happen during the first moments off the ground or the last seconds before touching down. I would wait patiently for us to touch the clouds, holding my breath as we bumped along the grassy runway, waiting for Dad to give me his confident thumbs up.

More incredible than the hours I spent flying with Dad is the fact that we spent this time together with only each other for entertainment. There were no iPods to keep us from having conversations, there were no DVD players built into the car for the commute to and from the airport. It wasn’t so long ago that parents actually talked with their kids. Up in the air, we were having fun, sure, but we also had a job to do piloting the plane. We talked our way through it, and I was never once bored. While we flew I learned how to follow instructions and work as a team, invaluable lessons to instill in any child. 

One afternoon Dad told me we were going to fly over our house. The sky seemed to stretch on forever, and to me the tops of the trees all looked the same. I had no idea how we were ever going to know where our house was. Dad handed control over to me so he was free to navigate the maps he spread out in his lap.

“It should be just over there,” Dad said to himself, twisting the throttle so we tilted to the right. “Yup! There, look out your window Sarah!” Sure enough, far below me was a tiny speck of blue, surrounded by miles of trees. We circled our home again and again, until Dad was certain I would always be able to find that space of air, our home, no matter how far away from it I might be.

You picked a perfect summer day to die. July 1, 2000 was the type of day that Minnesotans pray falls on a weekend when they are free to go to their cabin, hop in a boat or kick back in a lounge chair with a good book. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I knew before I got back to our house that you wouldn’t be there. Ever since you had completed the plane you were living for your weekends when you could get up before the sun and spend hours flying. Someday you and Mom would move to a small farm where you could have your own private runway. Mom and the yellow lab you would buy (aptly named Yellow Dog) would relax on the front porch while you were out flying. That was the plan, anyway. 

I dropped Emily off at the edge of her long driveway. While she pulled her sleeping bag and back pack from the trunk we made plans to go to the beach. It only took five minutes to drive from her house to ours. It’s cliché, but I remember that short drive in slow motion. The bright colors of the houses, the sounds of sprinklers whisking water onto manicured lawns. I had made that drive a hundred times but it was the first of the “last times”. The last time I would feel nothing out of the ordinary about driving home. The last time I would know beyond a doubt that I had a home.  

I noticed the police cars parked across from our house; they stuck out on our idyllic suburban street. I slowed down to gawk at them before turning into the driveway. Someone must be in trouble, I thought. Parked behind the two police cars was a large black car with darkly tinted windows. Police cars mean injuries; police cars with fancy black cars carry clergy, who may as well be the grim reaper. No matter how many prayers are said or bargains offered, death has already claimed its prize when that black car appears. But I didn’t know what was waiting for me in the presence of
those
car
s
, so I had forgotten about them as soon as they were out of my sight. 

I parked in the driveway out of habit. Your plane had been housed in the garage for so long that I had forgotten it wasn’t there anymore. I hoisted my sleeping bag into my arms and walked towards the porch. The windows and the front door were open, and as I approached I could see people sitting at the table. I was a little surprised to see so many people in our house, but it wasn’t unusual for you to bring other pilots back after a morning of flying for coffee and donuts.

And then I opened the door. I go back to that moment as I stepped inside, that last moment of my youth. Sometimes it is possible to see and feel your life changing, being swept out from under you, torn away, forcing you to become someone and something you never considered when daydreaming about the future. 

Mom screamed so loudly when she spotted me that I’m sure even you could hear her. “No! Not Sarah. You have to go, now!” she hollered, jumping from her chair and pushing the police officer at her side. “Go!” The officer stood there, motionless, his hat in his hands.

My mind slowly stumbled over what my eyes were taking in. Why is there a cop in my kitchen? Why is Mom screaming? Why do I feel sick? A man in black stood with his hands folded and his head down. I didn’t move.

Mom fell to the floor then, her small frame making a loud thud as her legs gave out from under her. I could hear her sucking in shallow, useless breaths as she began to make her way to me. Her face was bright red and her short hair was disheveled. Mom never left the house, even to go to the gas station, without spending an hour on her hair and makeup. The woman in front of me was a mess, the sight of which caused my heart to pound in fear. I didn’t want her to come anywhere near me. I held on to my sleeping bag, frozen in place, as Mom crawled towards me, her bare legs making sticking noises against the linoleum. She tried to pull herself up by grabbing onto my arm but she collapsed again, unable to stand.

I still have nightmares about Mom’s contorted body slithering towards me, howling, unable to catch her breath. Pain isn’t a feeling or a description; pain is tangible, the long-term effects burning years after the wounds have closed. 

I stared at Mom, barely able to make out her eyes under all the tears. When she finally spoke her voice sounded thick, her words stuck under the same weight that was keeping her on her knees. “Honey, there’s been an accident.”

You know how the spokes of a bike make clicking noises when you ride? And when you go faster the clicking speeds up? That is what my thoughts sounded like as they accelerated in my head. Accident. Ok. A car. Your car. We have to go to the hospital. We have to go now because they’re working on you in surgery. You lost your legs. Paralyzed. We’ll build a ramp. You’re in a coma. I need to -

“At the airport,” she continued, cutting off my brain.
Choking
sounds followed each word that she spoke. 

I blinked once, maybe for the first time since she came to me. The wave hit then, the rush of air washing up from my toes and into my lungs, swirling through my ears, boiling my blood. Something like deranged butterflies hit my stomach and I felt the back of my neck tingle. “Is he dead?” I asked.

Of course you were.

Mom bobbed her head up once and another howl escaped her mouth. Her fingers dug into my arm but I didn’t feel the pain from her nails. I dropped the sleeping bag and screamed, reaching for my hair, pulling it in my fists. I toppled to the floor, almost knocking Mom over.

She kept a grip on me. “It was instant. He didn’t feel a thing, there was nothing that could have been done,” she moaned, sounding like she was still trying to convince herself. 

What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t have known, was that while I was dropping Emily off at her house, Mom was on the front porch watering her flowers. The police and the black car came. As the officers got out and began to approach her she started to yell at them. “Was it my daughter or my husband? Was it the car or the airport?” For a few agonizing moments, she didn’t know who was dead, her pilot husband or her teenage daughter with a new drivers license. For what I am certain felt like punishment for everything she had ever done wrong in her life she had to brace herself for the death of either her husband or child.

I feel such guilt that she was alone. I should have driven home quicker. I should have gotten up earlier.

You had called Mom about thirty minutes before the crash to tell her you were going to do one or two rounds of take-offs and then you’d call her back so she could join you at the airport. The plane was due for a wash and you needed her help. Your call never came.

I shouldn’t allow my mind to go down this road, but it is impossible not to – you should have stopped flying one take-off earlier. You should have taxied one minute longer. You should have stopped to talk to another pilot before getting back in the plane after you called Mom. If you had, you wouldn’t have died. The wind would have passed without pulling you down.

The police didn’t want to tell Mom what happened to you on the porch. They didn’t want to make a scene and disrupt an otherwise lovely Saturday for our neighbors. When Mom refused to move they picked her up and carried her into the house. Once inside, all they had to say was ‘airport’. Mom had only a couple of minutes to try and grasp what had happened when she saw my car pull into the driveway. She had tried to communicate to the police that she wanted to tell me without them standing in the kitchen, but I came home before they felt they could leave her by herself.

The technicalities of your death are relatively simple. You were taking-off and had reached the approximate height of a telephone pole when the draft you were coasting on dissipated. There was no time to compensate, and so you went down. The left wing struck the ground first, sending your plane into a cartwheel. A few other pilots saw it happen. When it was over, they ran to your body, slumped into what was left of the cockpit.

You died from head trauma. It annoys me to see planes crash from higher altitudes, burn with fire, and yet the pilots walk away unharmed. Each time I see them on the news (which happens often enough to wreck several days for me
each
year) I don’t feel angry that those pilots survived. That would be wrong. But I do feel angry at you that you couldn’t
find a way to survive
.

No matter how many times Mom told me you had no time to think and no time to feel any pain, I know it isn’t true. You had to have had a second, even if it was the space of a heartbeat, where you knew something was wrong. Were you thinking about Mom for that heartbeat when you knew you would never see your wife again? Did you have time to think about us both? Were you scared?

I’ve decided that there is no such thing as an instant death. There are moments that stretch on and on, no matter how fast our hearts race against them. Sometimes I am afraid we will always be trapped in that instant, that breath just before you were dead and neither Mom or I knew how much we were about to lose. Every time I catch myself thinking about that moment I collapse inside all over again, the weight of the possibility that you could have lived is too much to bear. 

People came to the house. My friends filled up my bedroom, talking quietly among themselves while I sat on the bed, staring at the wall. Emily’s parents sat in the kitchen with Mom while she called our relatives in Missouri.

The day passed and the crowd slipped away, home to appreciate their families, thankful they weren’t us.

Mom’s brother, Terry, and his girlfriend stayed over in the guest room. Emily and I put our sleeping bags on the living room floor, watching movie after movie. Mom went up to your room where I can only imagine the loneliness she felt in the bed you shared for nearly two decades. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night beside my husband and I am torn between wanting to curl up against him and a fierce desire to sleep as far away from him as possible. It is as if I want to prepare myself for the day when he is ripped away from me, as if the blow would be lessened by living my life at a distance.

Late in the night, unable to sleep, I wandered up to my room. I turned the lights on and looked around at my belongings. I started to open and shut drawers. I took items from my shelf. I dug through the mess in my closet. I was overcome with a need to find something was ours, something that held a memory so strong I would be comforted into sleep.

I sat on my bed, surrounded by pictures and keepsakes, sifting through them. Mom must have heard me from your room. She appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing, Sarah?” Her eyes were swollen, her voice hoarse.