The Power of Memory, in Four Parts

Part One: Flight Out of Phoenix

It had been a long, difficult day, dealing with a person who is no longer in control of his own emotions.  The morning had started around 4 am in San Francisco, catching the earliest flight out to get a whole day in Phoenix.  Good thing about that flight: few delays at that hour.  Bad part: 4 am.

Sloan boys. Terrors back in the day

The bright spot of the day was eliciting laughter from Dan, Cal’s brain-injured brother, by calling up the long-ago shenanigans of the Sloan brothers.  Biggest laugh came from memories of “cat skeet shooting,” (don’t ask).  The most poignant moment was remembering the house they built together in Sioux City as teenagers, and Dan saying suddenly and loudly: “That was the best summer of my life!”  It was a good moment in a trying day.

That evening, American Airlines handed us a creeping delay on our nonstop to Omaha.  Half-hour turned into an hour turned into 90 minutes turned into two hours.  I was all set to be mightily annoyed, thinking this was about flight ops and staff cuts and maximizing profit margins.  But as we taxied out, an announcement from the flight deck came on: Folks, (and isn’t it funny, after about 70 years of commercial aviation, that’s how pilots always address us?) The reason for our delay is that there are thunderstorms around Omaha.  We’ve had to hold here, so we aren’t vectoring over that airport forever.  But the storms are moving off to the east now, and we think we can sneak in.  Just be aware: this may be bumpy.  We’re going to have the flight attendants sit for the last 45 minutes of the flight. 

I love to fly.  I still do, even with the difficulties and cost cutting and cattle call feel of all of it.  It is the early imprint of my childhood as the daughter of an airline pilot.  Some of our best family memories were on airplanes. The very fact of human flight still amazes me; what it says about power and possibilities and human ingenuity.  An airplane wing is almost alive in its complexities and responses.  I get Bernoulli’s equation, which explains lift and thrust and all of that.  But to me, it’s still a miracle. I still thrill to every takeoff.

This one was extraordinary.  To the west, a fiery red lit half the world—one of those sunsets that stretches forever and touches everything.  To the east, a huge full moon was rising.  It sailed up a purpling sea, a bright red orb—reflecting all the fire to the west.  I have never seen anything like it. The cabin fell silent, watching.

Part Two: Landing in Omaha. 

As the pilot promised, the short flight to Omaha was bumpy.  We needed to get there tonight, to pick up our rental car in the morning, to get to Sioux City for Cal’s 50^th high school reunion commencing the next day.  The bumpy flight didn’t bother me.  Turbulence is never the cause of a plane crash.  But I knew some of my cabin mates were nervous.  I looked around, noting the white knuckles and pinched faces, and wished them ease.  I silently sent them this advice: Watch the flight attendants.  They bounce around, trying to do their work, acting like this is all a big pain rather than something to worry about.  It’s calming, if this kind of thing bothers you. 

As advertised, the cabin crew sat down 45 minutes out.  And then the show started.  Off to the east a spectacular electrical storm raged.  We didn’t fly right through it, but we were close enough to see the show.  And what a show it was.  Brilliant flashes lit the sky in rapid succession.  Jagged forks of sizzling energy flew everywhere: up, down, sideways, cloud-to-cloud. The clouds were inky black and boiling; the lightening was a laser show.  Again, the cabin fell silent, watching.  The four planes that were trying to get to Omaha that night lined up and landed—zip-zip-zip-zip—four in a row, an aviation ballet. This flight had started off annoying me.  But its bookends—fire in Phoenix and lasers in Omaha—were together one of the most memorable flying experiences I have ever had. 

Part Three: Interlude in the Heartland

We got to the hotel in Omaha after 2 am, given all the delays.  Bleary-eyed, we headed out in the morning, searching for a brunch spot on the way up Highway 29 to Sioux City.  By the time we found a suitable stop—Frannie’s Café in Onawa, Iowa, it was Friday noon, and it appeared that every farm family in the surrounding parts had taken itself out to lunch.  The patrons looked well-fed; every meal was a heart attack on a plate.  Cal texted Cooper a picture of his food and Cooper fired back:  You got all that for $7.99?

 Our wait person, Maggie, was bursting with energy, bouncing like a pinball around the room, taking orders, refilling coffee, delivering food, and somehow, in between it all, having perky conversations with the patrons.  You folks are from San Francisco?  That is amazing!!!  What are you doing here??????  Maggie seemed to think she had the very best job in the world and couldn’t believe her luck in landing it.  She and her colleagues wore t-shirts emblazoned with big block letters screaming, Hot Beef! Hot Beef! Hot Beef! covering every inch of the shirt, front and back. Because really.  One homage to hot beef is OK, but why do that when you can shout it 25 times?

Beef. Before it gets hot

As we said warm goodbyes and left, I said to Cal. Hot beef is a good slogan.  But it could also be: Frannie’s: Where the prices are low and the calorie counts are high.

The reunion was fun, interesting and a little bit poignant for Cal.  He feels he will probably never come back to Sioux City, because there is nothing left for him here.  He connected with old friends. We toured the high school, visited his childhood home, went to see his parents’ headstone in Logan Park Cemetery.  I was just a trailing spouse at the parties, which was fine and interesting to a point.  But I enjoyed the other touchstones.  I especially enjoyed the stop by Frannie’s, and a look at lives different from mine. 

Part Four: Flying Through Salt Lake

Our travel day home, with Delta Airlines, was challenging.  There aren’t a lot of options for getting to the West Coast from Omaha, and the layovers in connecting cities are either ridiculously long or nail-bitingly short—or, so far east of Omaha that the routes are nonsensical.  Our original plan had us flying out of Omaha late morning, routing through Minneapolis and arriving in San Francisco around midnight.  But when the flight to Minneapolis got delayed so long we would miss the connecting flight, we had to try again.  And again. And again.  Through Detroit.  Through Atlanta.  Through Baltimore.  I kept canceling and re-booking on the Delta app, which was actually pretty handy. But it was a long, exhausting dance, committing to a new route only to see the possibility disappear through flight delays. 

Finally, I decided on Omaha to Salt Lake City to SFO.  It had a 6 pm departure time—so we would ultimately spend all day trying to get out of Omaha.  But it was pretty efficient—a 2-1/2 hour flight to a city directly on line to San Francisco, and then, another 1 -1/2 hour flight home.    Easy-peasy.  Except for one thing—which I did think about, and then discarded, deciding it wouldn’t be a problem.

Delta to Salt Lake left on time.  We got pretty good seats, miraculously, given how late they were booked.  And then, about 45 minutes out of Salt Lake, flying over the rugged Wasatch Mountains, that thing that I had thought about, and discarded, hit me.  The thought invaded my brain and it wouldn’t leave.  It grew and grew. The emotions followed.  I looked over at Cal and his face was the same as mine: drawn, blanched, coursing with tears.

The last time we flew into the Salt Lake City Airport was June 8, 2015.  We were racing to the McKay-Dee Trauma Center in Ogden, hoping against hope that Carson would still be alive when we got there. That his brain injury was not as severe as the attending physician—who had tried to get me to sign a DNR over the phone—had described.  That his heart had not stopped again while we desperately tried to reach him.  That somehow, despite what we’d been told; about what I knew from a lifetime of writing about medicine; we would walk into that trauma center and claim a miracle.

It was not to be.  All that was left, after that harrowing flight 10 years ago, was the decision about when to turn off the machines and say goodbye.

I did think about all this before clicking BOOK IT on the Delta app in the Omaha airport.  I had long said I would never set foot in Utah again.  But I told myself, how hard could it be? All we had to do was land in that airport, walk down a concourse, and climb aboard another plane that would take us home. It would be a good, de-sensitizing first time back, I had thought.  Oh God. How wrong I was.

I tell my grief clients all the time that memories are powerful things.  They pierce us, shape us, make us.  They can lift us up to great heights, or drive us to our knees.  But they’re sneaky, too, because they don’t live just in our brains, but in our psyches and our bodies.  So cherish your memories.  Welcome them.  Use them to bring texture and richness to your life. 

Just never underestimate them.