Chapter 1
ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN AIRLINES CRASH is the bold headline I see when I pick up the newspaper Johnny’s son, my two doors down nextdoor neighbor, dropped on my front porch at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. Not like I sleep much nowadays, my nightmares making keeping my eyes closed a challenge. I gloss over the other articles, MRS. PETERSON’S POODLE WINS 1ST PLACE IN LOCAL DOG SHOW not having the same appeal of the cover story continued on page four. I know what the article is going to say, how it is going to spin the few comments the reporters wheedled out of the few survivors too attention hungry to stick with the no comment rule our crash survivors group put in place. Didn’t I mention I was on the plane? My bad, I was the pilot.
Everyone wants to hear about the unteachable survival manuevers I put into action to save half of the passengers and flight crew. No one ever wants to hear about the voices I can’t shut-out, voices that sound eerily similar to the screams filling the cabin as the plane plummented 1,000 stories into trees determined to catch the engines on fire. The 150 passengers and crew I lost that day, my co-pilot among the dead, aren’t mentioned, not until I go to group.
“I still think we should go back. Pay our respects.” Chris, the leader of the revisit the site movement tells group. Those not his completely loyal followers, i.e. most of group, sigh, we’ve heard this before. About how it’s important to revisit the crash sites to deal with survivor’s guilt. Every psychologist and sociologist, and wacked-out weirdo who thinks taking one psychology class makes him a certified PhD, told us that from the time we stepped off the rescue boat, a plane not the most sensitive mode of transportation after everything that happened. I’ll listen to them when they become the ones solely responsible for the deaths of 150 people, and the mutilations of many more.
“We can pay our respects here.” Mel, one of the more sensible group members, says. It’s a shame not many share her opinion, though not many lost a twin sister, who they watched burn in the flames, powerless to do anything thanks to her newfound paralysis. But everybody lost someone, whether it was a seatmate or a friend, or in my case, a wife.
It was our honeymoon, two years overdue, but that’s what happens when two busy people head over heels in love with their jobs decide to get married. We finally picked a date, October 3rd, the anniversary of the first time we met and our wedding day. Makes it easy to remember everything, also makes her that much madder when I don’t. I mean, made, nothing will make her anything ever again.
“I think we need to go. If only just to see their final resting places.” Janie, the quiet teenager who sits in the corner never saying a word, tells group. And no one argues. No one wants to tell a fifteen year old girl that she can’t go see the final resting place of her entire family. With the orphan making the final decision group disbands, heading to their separate homes where they’ll grumble and mumble while they pack but will be ready for the boat bright and early tomorrow morning. “Let’s go home.” I tell Janie. She takes my arm, the orphan and the widower walking off into the sunset.
My duffel bag is too stuffed for the small number of provisions I need to take with me, but every time I unzip the straining zipper I find it hard to choose between the ten flannel shirts I packed, every one of them suddenly becoming my favorite. I see most of group has the same problem I do, their bags overstuffed with momentos they plan on leaving behind. I don’t have anything to add to the pile, all the momentos I could bear to part with buried with my wife in her coffin at the cemetary no more than three miles from our, now my, house. I guess you could call me lucky, no one else got to bring home their loved one. But what is luck really because I wouldn’t call sitting by your wife’s hospital bed, watching as the doctors try in vain to repair unfixable organs luck, but everyone’s different.
