Taking Flight (17 page)

“I love it,” I said, hugging the large box.

“There’s more,” Mom said from her spot on the couch. She handed me an envelope. “Sorry this took so long.”

I took the envelope from her. Inside was a homemade certificate, surrounded by pink and purple music notes, for piano lessons.

I think of all the teenagers who hate their parents, and while I acknowledge that some of those teenagers have very, very good reasons to be angry, most of them don’t. Most teenagers don’t give their parents the chance to shine.

I loved my parents to the moon and back that Christmas morning, but not because they had given me an extravagant gift. I loved them because they listened to me. They knew what I liked and what my passions were. Better still, they believed in me.

I received one more gift – a Sarah McLachlan piano book. I stayed up all night penciling in the notes I didn’t know for the bass clef, and by the time the morning light shone through the bedroom window I could play the first bars of “Angel”. I played them over and over, tears in the corner of my eyes as the notes melted into each other, harmonizing at the command of my uneducated fingers.

After breakfast I headed back to the bedroom to keep working on the keyboard when Dad stopped me. “Bring it out here and play. I want to hear what you can do.” While I set up the stand Dad poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. He cozied up next to Mom, who was reading a book in her new slippers, and listened intently to my song.

Mom and I spent a long time living our lives following the same traditions and standards that had been followed when you were alive. At first we didn’t know any other way to behave. Later, when we realized we were becoming a family independent from you, we clung to what we thought you would have wanted us to do out of fear, regardless of how painful holding on had become.

We had been traveling to Missouri for Christmas for six years, so without really thinking about it, we booked our plane tickets to Saint Louis for our first Christmas without you. Neither of us had bought presents for the other, but it didn’t matter. We were in the throes of shock and depression; just keeping our heads above water took up all our strength. I doubted I would ever be able to buy Mom her slippers again.

We arrived in Saint Louis on Christmas Eve. Grandma and Angela picked us up from the airport, and I saw the disappointment in their eyes when they hugged us hello. It was like we tricked them. As if the last six months had passed and they had believed during that time that they had merely fallen out of touch with you. Our presence, our thin bodies, tired eyes and fake smiles broke their comforting lie. I guess we all have moments when your loss unexpectedly slams into our hearts and becomes just a little bit more real; that moment came for your family when you didn’t return for Christmas.

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.