Just A Flight

I’m sitting next to my father, but no words are spoken. The flight attendant to my left looks as though she knows something is up. I’m trying to keep from falling out of my seat and into the aisle, from mentally cracking, screaming out loud, or both. I don’t trust myself, but I know I’m on a plane and don’t want to startle anyone. I’m hiding behind my sunglasses, with my ball cap pulled down low. The thoughts keep swirling in my head. Dead? Zeke? Where was she shot? How many times? Did she suffer?! God, no!!! Please tell me she didn’t suffer. No, no, no, no…HOW CAN SHE BE DEAD?!?! Dead?! At this point in time, I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around that fact, as if there is some part of me that thinks this is all a dream. I’m in shock. Tears are trickling down my cheeks in deep sorrow, and I tilt my head down to hide myself even further. Everything feels black. I just have to make it through the flight without incident, yet I struggle like a 2-year-old to sit still. I’ve never used so much energy to simply sit still.

“Just hold on,” I keep telling myself. “Just. Hold. On.”

I know that, today, this is not my current reality, but that flight, only a few hours after finding out Shani was murdered, is seared into my brain for the rest of my life. I know that I’m flying back to Austin after a weekend in Chicago. I know that it’s been 14 months since Shani was killed. I know these things, but for a moment, the memory of that flight, the most memorable of my life, is replaying itself in my mind like a broken record. The shock consumes me, and I just want to get out of my seat. I need air, but can’t move. I want off of this plane.

One moment, things seemed to be okay. I was reading a book, Ghost Rider, by Neil Peart, a story about the drummer from Rush and the healing motorcycle journey he went on following the deaths of his wife and daughter over a 10 month span in 1997-98. I’ve got the window seat, and I’m crowded by the large woman sitting next to me, feeling pinned into this small, contained space. While constantly shifting her body, struggling to find a comfortable sitting position, she grabs a magazine out of the seat pocket in front of her and begins to flip through it page by page, literally throwing each page into the next, barely taking time to see what she’s looking at, as if she’s angry. One after another she picks up the corner of each oncoming page and slaps it down, until she reaches the last page. She puts that magazine back, picks up another and starts all over. The sound of the rustling magazine paper and her obvious discomfort invade my space, and I am unable to focus on my book anymore. I look up and see a flight attendant standing off to our left. Suddenly, my brain connects the dots, anxiety kicks in, and I am reliving the events of June 3rd all over again.

I put on my headphones and scroll through my iPod to some David Gray music. I turn my head to the window to shield my emotions from those around me. I know that I’m in a public setting just like I was on that morning last June, but right now I can’t stop. The tears keep coming and coming. I pull off my sunglasses for a moment and wipe my eyes and nose. I take a deep breath and try to ground myself, to pull back into the moment and reality, but the sheer thought of having made that flight, the flight, saddens me so deeply that I am consumed with sorrow.

I keep telling myself, “It’s just a flight. It’s just a flight. It’s just a flight. Just. Hold. On.”

But no matter how hard I try, I can’t escape the reality that I’ve also told myself this once before.