crash

Tonight is a tough night. It's been a really long day: commuting to Indy from Fort Wayne, working on a fun project but having to be "on" all day with my colleagues, commuting all the way back. I'm exhausted. I've had dinner and I'm not hungry, but I want to eat. And zone out. And get away from myself.

Mostly I want to get away from today's anniversary. Two years ago today, my mom and her partner Frances were in a terrible plane crash. France's was piloting a small aircraft, and on the way home the engines stopped and they crashed in a field in central New York. I got the call in Bloomington, Indiana and started pacing and praying and crying. I knew Frances was being airlifted. I knew my mom was okay enough to talk, but that she was bleeding really badly. I called a friend to come sit with me, but there's nothing to be said when you're waiting to hear if the people you love are dead.

I imagined it - being in the air, hearing the silence, the mayday, the barely controlled panic. Later on I listened to the air traffic control chatter. Mayday. I can't get to that airport. I'm going to try to land. Then silence. Eventually another pilot saying, "I'll go look around in that area and see if I can find them." Roger that.

On the way down, they told each other they loved each other.

A few minutes later, I got the call.



The crazy thing is that it was almost just an emergency landing. Had they been a few feet higher, they would have just had a bumpy landing in a field. But there was a tree that grew a little too zealously over the years, and it took out the left wing. The emergency landing became a crash landing, the plane spun as it hit the ground, and it took out part of a field

and the left side of Frances' body.

They both survived. It was touch and go for Frances, but over the past two years she's had several major surgeries and they've put her face, arm, and leg back together with metal mesh, plates, and screws. My mom had a head wound, and now has a nasty scar. It's miraculous, as these things go.

Life is short. Even if I spend part of my life in tears, it will be better than being drugged up and oblivious, not living at all. It's been two years for them. It's been seven days for me.

I'm alive, and I want to live.