Charlie and Grace flew home yesterday on our originally scheduled flight to San Francisco. The month ahead, which we've been told will be a long road, is something I keep picturing as a long runway instead. Perhaps the runway that James and I were not able to speed down yesterday as planned. Taking off is his favorite part of being on an airplane.
It is hard to have them gone. Our paths have now diverged. I knew their absence would loom large, and that I would feel overwhelmed at facing this next chapter without Charlie at my side. I no longer have his medical knowledge at the ready to help me contextualize every number and medication and machine beep. I no longer have Grace's spunky energy and flair to distract and embolden me in the face of what's ahead. But it is more than that. It's the inflection point marked by that airplane lifting off. I am acutely aware that our navigational course is so different from what we thought it would be just a few days prior.
We were already at a transitional moment. James was about to start kindergarten, Grace was ready to play big sister on the schoolyard. Charlie was established in his medical practice and becoming a sought after pulmonologist, honored by his hospital's request to become the director of the ICU on top of managing his own patients. My own business as an executive coach and leadership consultant was booming, with more clients than I could handle and plans to onboard several associates. We had so many plans this fall, both professional and personal. We had tickets to Mexico to celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday with 8 of our closest friends. Before this news, our daily existence was evolving into a different rhythm, and a welcome one.
The phone conversation to wish Charlie and Grace safe travels as their plane doors were about to close nearly gutted me. I dialed them from the old pea green rotary phone next to James's hospital bed, swallowing down tears as I stuttered goodbye. I desperately wanted to be on that plane with them, James by my side spewing bright orange goldfish crumbs all over the floor and Grace in the coveted window seat. I was ready to order them a ginger ale when the flight attendant came by with her metal cart, even willing to let them each have a Whole Can. I was ready to hold my son's hand during the inevitable turbulence and try to make it fun despite my own small bursts of panic. How quaint my fear of a few little bumps in an airplane seems now.
It's easy to recall that old Gwyneth Paltrow movie "Sliding Doors." She misses an elevator and her life splits into two tracks. The movie follows both of them in parallel. Our own sliding door has shut, and there is no waking up from this nightmare. My son's ginger ale is now flat and spiked with meds, his "oxygen mask" has already dropped down from the overhead bin and is in the form of a rolling machine attached to him night and day like a mechanical albatross. This turbulence is of a far more frightening kind. We're at the start of a whole new runway, rushing forward to a foreign destination. There is no seatbelt sign in sight.
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