Chapter 5 - What Grief Had Taken From Me
The turbulence lasted only fourteen minutes.
It felt much longer.
Each time the airplane dipped, Louise gripped the armrests behind me.
Each time, I turned and smiled.
Not because I wasn't scared.
Because Marjorie was right.
Louise needed to see that I was still there.
My husband had always been the calm one during flights.
I hated turbulence.
He would reach across the seat and squeeze my knee.
“Air is just bumpy sometimes,” he'd say.
I used to roll my eyes.
“That is not scientifically reassuring.”
“It wasn't supposed to be.”
Then he'd grin.
I remembered that while the plane shook.
Air is just bumpy sometimes.
Life, apparently, could be too.
When the seatbelt sign finally turned off, the cabin relaxed collectively.
A few passengers laughed nervously.
Louise immediately unbuckled and leaned forward.
“You okay, Mom?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
This time, I didn't say everything was fine.
“I was scared.”
She nodded.
“Me too.”
“But we're okay.”
“Okay.”
Marjorie looked at me approvingly.
I almost laughed.
An hour earlier, I wanted her anywhere except beside me.
Now something strange had happened.
We weren't friends.
Forgiveness doesn't transform strangers into family.
But the hostility was gone.
In its place was something more complicated.
Accountability.
Marjorie turned the photograph over in her hands.
“My daughter took this three weeks ago.”
I glanced at it.
“She looks happy.”
“She was exhausted.”
“Both can be true.”
Marjorie looked at me.
“That sounds like experience.”
I looked down at my sleeping baby.
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“I haven't been very supportive.”
Louise leaned between the seats.
“Were you mean to her?”
“Louise.”
Marjorie answered anyway.
“Sometimes.”
“Like today?”
Marjorie sighed.
“Sometimes exactly like today.”
Louise frowned.
“Why?”
“I thought I was helping.”
“By making her feel bad?”
That question nearly made the man across the aisle laugh.
Marjorie shook her head.
“No.”
She paused.
“I suppose I thought if I pointed out everything she was doing wrong, she'd become better.”
Louise looked confused.
“That sounds backwards.”
“It is.”
I watched Marjorie carefully.
She seemed different when discussing her daughter.
Less rigid.
Less defensive.
“My daughter used to call me for advice,” she said. “Now she sends photographs instead.”
“Maybe she's afraid you'll criticize her.”
Marjorie looked at me.
“I think that's exactly what happened.”
She traced her thumb across the photograph.
“Her husband asked me to stop.”
I didn't respond.
“I told him not to interfere between a mother and daughter.”
Louise tilted her head.
“Isn't he her family too?”
Marjorie laughed softly.
“Yes.”
For a few seconds, nobody spoke.
Then she said, “I haven't spoken to my daughter in four days.”
I thought about the number.
Four days.
Before my husband died, four days meant nothing.
A long weekend.
A work trip.
An inconvenience.
Now I understood exactly how much could change in one moment.
“Call her when we land,” I said.
Marjorie stared at me.
“What?”
“Call her.”
“She probably doesn't want to hear from me.”
“Then apologize.”
Her expression tightened.
“I don't know what to say.”
I looked toward Louise.
“My daughter apparently gives lessons.”
Louise smiled.
Marjorie did too.
Then my daughter became serious.
“Don't say you're sorry and then tell her why it's her fault.”
Marjorie blinked.
I covered my mouth.
Where had this child come from?
“That's very specific,” Marjorie said.
“My friend Mia says sorry like that.”
“What does she say?”
“I'm sorry I broke your pencil, but you shouldn't have left it where I could break it.”
Marjorie laughed.
A real laugh.
Several passengers who had been listening smiled too.
“Understood.”
Louise nodded.
“And don't say ‘I'm sorry you got upset.’”
“Anything else?”
“Don't make it super long.”
Marjorie looked at me.
“You've raised a terrifyingly effective negotiator.”
I felt something warm move through my chest.
My husband would have loved this conversation.
He would have been proud.
The sadness was still there.
But for the first time, the memory didn't only hurt.
It comforted.
Marjorie looked at the picture on Louise's tablet again.
“May I see that?”
Louise handed it over.
Marjorie studied the photograph.
My son was perhaps six weeks old.
I looked exhausted.
Louise was smiling.
My husband wasn't visible because he'd taken the photograph.
“When was this?”
“Before Dad died,” Louise said.
Marjorie looked at me.
“How?”
My body tightened.
She immediately shook her head.
“You don't have to answer.”
I appreciated that.
For several seconds, I considered remaining silent.
Then I surprised myself.
“It was sudden.”
She waited.
“He left for work.”
My voice became quieter.
“He kissed Louise goodbye. He kissed the baby.”
I swallowed.
“He told me he'd pick up dinner.”
Louise stared out the window.
“He never came home.”
Marjorie closed her eyes.
I continued because stopping somehow felt harder.
“A police officer came instead.”
The words still sounded impossible.
“There was an accident.”
Marjorie pressed her fingers over her lips.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I spent the first week expecting him to walk through the door.”
Louise spoke softly.
“I still do.”
I reached backward and touched her hand.
“So do I.”
Marjorie returned the tablet.
“When you boarded today…”
She stopped.
I knew what she was thinking.
“When I boarded today,” I said, “my goal was surviving six hours.”
She looked ashamed.
“And I made it harder.”
“Yes.”
“I wish I could undo it.”
“You can't.”
She nodded.
“But you can decide what happens next.”
My own words surprised me.
Maybe because they weren't only about Marjorie.
They were about me.
I couldn't undo the accident.
I couldn't bring my husband back.
I couldn't erase the nights Louise cried.
But I could decide what happened next.
For months—or perhaps years—I would still grieve.
But grief did not have to make every decision for us.
Marjorie stared at me for a long moment.
Then she reached for the flight attendant button.
I tensed automatically.
She noticed.
“No.”
She gave a small embarrassed smile.
“Not what you think.”
The attendant arrived.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes.”
Marjorie gestured toward me.
“I'd like to buy her something.”
The attendant smiled politely.
“We have snacks and beverages—”
“No.”
Marjorie glanced at my sleeping son.
“I mean, does she need food? A meal? Anything?”
I shook my head.
“I'm fine.”
She looked at me.
Then Louise.
“Apparently I'm not allowed to argue.”
Louise nodded.
“Correct.”
The attendant walked away smiling.
Marjorie leaned back.
“I owe the entire cabin an apology.”
“You don't.”
“I embarrassed you publicly.”
“You apologized publicly.”
She looked uncertain.
“Is that enough?”
“No.”
Her face fell.
I continued.
“But it doesn't need to be enough today.”
She watched me.
“Change is what makes an apology worth something.”
Those were words my husband had used.
Not about anything serious.
Years earlier, after Louise colored on a wall with permanent marker.
She'd apologized.
My husband had kissed the top of her head.
“An apology isn't magic,” he told her. “Change is what makes it mean something.”
I'd forgotten that.
Louise hadn't.
She smiled.
“Dad said that.”
“I know.”
For several minutes, we talked about him.
Not his death.
Him.
His terrible cooking.
The way he sang badly in the car.
How he could never fold fitted sheets.
How Louise once convinced him to wear a plastic crown for an entire grocery trip.
I laughed.
So did she.
And something shifted.
The empty seat in my life still existed.
But talking about him didn't make it emptier.
It filled it.
Marjorie listened.
Then she spoke about her daughter.
Her name was Hannah.
Her grandson was Caleb.
She told us Hannah had once been the little girl who slept beside her during thunderstorms.
Now she had a baby of her own.
“I still see her as that little girl,” Marjorie said.
“Maybe that's why I think I get to tell her what to do.”
I nodded.
Louise said, “My grandma does that to Mom.”
I turned.
“Excuse me?”
Louise smiled innocently.
Marjorie laughed.
“Careful. Your grandmother might be waiting at baggage claim.”
“She probably is,” I said.
For the next hour, the mood remained surprisingly peaceful.
Then a younger woman from two rows ahead approached.
She hesitated beside our seats.
“Excuse me.”
I looked up.
She pointed toward Louise.
“I just wanted to tell you something.”
Louise blinked.
The woman smiled.
“My mother breastfed my little brother when we traveled. People used to make comments.”
She looked at me.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Thank you.”
Another passenger spoke from across the aisle.
“She absolutely didn't.”
Marjorie closed her eyes briefly.
Then she stood.
Everyone looked at her.
She cleared her throat.
“I owe some people here an apology.”
I stared at her.
She looked around the nearby rows.
“I was rude to this mother.”
Her voice shook.
“I thought my discomfort mattered more than her baby's needs.”
Nobody interrupted.
“I was wrong.”
She looked at Louise.
“And an eight-year-old had to remind me of something I should have known at my age.”
Louise's cheeks turned pink.
Marjorie sat.
Nobody applauded.
And I was glad.
This wasn't a performance.
It didn't need one.
The gray-haired man simply said, “Good for you.”
Marjorie nodded.
The younger woman returned to her seat.
The cabin noise resumed.
Then Louise leaned toward me.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think Dad saw that?”
My heart stopped.
“I don't know.”
She thought about it.
“I hope he did.”
“So do I.”
Louise smiled.
“He would've laughed when she hit her knee.”
Marjorie stared at her.
“You saw that?”
“Everybody saw that.”
Marjorie laughed so hard she covered her face.
And against all expectations, I laughed too.
Not politely.
Not carefully.
I laughed until tears appeared.
For several seconds, grief and joy occupied the same space.
Neither erased the other.
And I realized something I had forgotten during the month since my husband died.
Being alive did not betray the dead.
May you like
Maybe continuing to live was another way of loving them.
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