A Not So Near Death Experience

We had to wake up at 4:00am to get to the airport for our flight home. The six of us met in the lobby. Melody and Joe were catching a flight later in the day. Sometime between waking up and getting in the cab, Dad got a call from Melody saying that Joe had gotten very sick with a bad fever and couldn't get out of bed. Dad offered to stay behind with them but there was a snow storm coming so Aunt Mel told him to go on and fly out before the airport started to cancel flights. So we carried on, shuffled through security, and waited at our gate. Dad had a few more phone calls with Melody while the rest of us munched on breakfast items and as we walked the gangway and stepped onto the plane, Melody said she was taking Joe to the hospital. Brett and I took our seats in the back of the plane and it started to rain a little. While all the passengers were settling in, Ellen sent a text that said, "Dad's getting off the plane." I leaned my head into the aisle and saw Dad pull on his backpack and disappear around the corner. While I understood (and had secretly hoped) he felt like he should stay to help Melody, it feels a little wrong or icky or something for a family member to get off of a plane and stay behind while you fly away.

Within moments, my atrocious brain pointed out that Dad getting off of the plane most definitely meant that we were on an ill-fated flight. Because how else can the whole family die leaving that one person to say, "I should have been on that flight."? That's how it happens in the movie you know. A simple phone call pulls one guy off the plane and BAM! He escaped death.
I hated that I thought this but then I thought about the fact that we were flying into the beginnings of a snow storm so this preposterous Lifetime movie plot didn't seem all that unlikely. I thought about Dad living alone in his big house with no family and I couldn't imagine him happy so I thought maybe I should get off the plane too. In recent years I've become increasingly uncomfortable flying for no real reason other than I don't want to die that way. I'm not so uncomfortable with the idea that I won't do it but I'm uneasy enough that I need real motivation to book a flight and have to mentally prepare to then get on it.
Now, I knew that if I told Brett was I was thinking about, he would laugh at me and maybe even be a bit put-off that I had concocted these thoughts. But my concern was growing.
"Brett?"
"Hmm."
"Don't laugh. You know how there's always the one person that didn't show up to work the day the building exploded and then he's left there to think about that forever?"
"Yeah."
"Dad got off the plane." Brett looked up at me. "We're goners."
"Lu, no. We're going to be fine. Don't think about those things." I looked up at him without smiling which is so rare that Brett knew I wasn't just being silly for the sake of it.
"Think about it... the rain, the snow storm..." I said.

As Brett prepared a response, the captain came walking up the aisle. He was a dignified looking man with a kind face. He was passing wing pins out to the children and as he did this he said the following:
"Listen folks, I wish I could tell you that this is going to be a smooth flight..."
That's all I heard when my survival instincts kicked in and I kind of blacked out a little while also bolting into action undoing my seatbelt and preparing to run. Brett put his hand on my shoulder and listened. "... pretty bumpy... flying through a storm..."
I heard things but I couldn't listen. I had concocted a tale of doom and it was being confirmed by a professional (who, in my extensive flight history, has never left the cockpit to warn people about flight conditions). And then it happened, a wave of heat rolled up my spine and my eyes filled with tears.
"We have to get off the plane." I felt desperate. And embarrassed. And why wasn't anyone else reacting to this news?
"Lu, it's going to be ok. Just a few bumps." So I sat in my seat like a child and cried wimpy, little tears that I wiped away before they could ever roll down my prideful face. Brett was not terribly reassuring but maybe I could not be consoled. My flight fears were coming true and it was a matter of being frightened and nauseous until it happened. As a proud non-cryer, the fact that my body had decided to cry without my consent only alarmed me further.
It knew I was in real danger.

I'll have you know that I died three thousand deaths on that two hour flight to Atlanta that was no more bumpy than a bus ride on a potholed highway. I've had way worse flights that were never acknowledged by the captain at any point in the journey. I spent an hour and a half waiting to be sick and scared and it was pure torture. So agonizing, that I wore myself out completely and fell asleep for the last half hour of the smooth ride. We landed in Atlanta, stepped off that plane, and I had nothing else to do but own up to my childish behavior. I told Big Mama of my in-flight distress and as I told her, we saw the Captain walking along to his next flight, happily rolling his suitcase behind him.
"YOU!!!" I wanted to scream. I imagined tackling him to the ground to explain the terror his good manners caused me. Had he stayed in his cockpit to announce the possibility of light turbulence, I'd still have years left on my life.

Now let me tell you this. Towards the end of my panic, just before I dozed off, I was thinking about our little house. I wanted to be in our home. I thought about how cozy it is in the mornings and the way the sunbeams come into the kitchen. I know it's dramatic but stay with me. I love those morning sunbeams. I couldn't wait to be home. Desperate to be there. While I thought about the pups curled in their favorite corners of each couch, I realized I was on a plane and excited to be flying home. That sounds minor and normal but it's not. During all those traveling yers in my early twenties, it was that I was desperate to extend a trip just so I didn't have to go home. The flight back to Charleston was defeat. I cried wimpy, prideful tears on those flights too, but they were because I didn't want to go back home to so much emptiness. That's all totally different now. I've never been excited to come home before and that thought felt like a present on Christmas morning.

Moreover, if you read all of this and think that I'm overdramatic or possibly insane, I'd like you to know that Mom and Ellen also admitted to thinking about us being in a fiery plane crash once Dad got off the plane. So there.