The Day That Remapped My Life
On November 19, 1996 I woke up in my college sorority house. I probably slept in that day as I did pretty much every day in college but I don’t remember the specifics of the morning. I do remember that I dressed in black tights and a black velour dress from Urban Outfitters. I don’t know what I usually wore as a college junior in Los Angeles but I recall that back then all black was an unusual choice for a school day, I would later think of my black outfit as foreshadowing the events of the day.
I must have gone to some classes but that’s not in my recollection of that day. My memory starts at some point later that afternoon when I went with my friend Sara to her boyfriend’s fraternity house and started playing drinking games. The fraternity was headed to a TV taping, which was a common fundraiser for Greek houses in Los Angeles and much less fun than it sounds. Sara and I decided to go with them. We must have packed into someone’s car and driven to Burbank. I flirted with one of the boys from the fraternity which made the cold, hungry tedious experience of watching a mediocre TV show do take after take more fun. For some reason I remember walking across the lot with Sara to find a bathroom and seeing the TV “stars” from the show — but I have no idea what show we saw or who those stars were. I recall packing back into a car and driving home, stopping at Taco Bell or some other fast food since we were starving, and considering whether I would keep hanging out with the boy I had been talking to, and deciding not to and heading back to the sorority house where I lived. All of these memories, a typical Tuesday night of a Junior at a college in Los Angeles, were the last truly innocent moments of my life.
I so clearly remember walking in through the entry of my sorority house, this is a slow motion, vivid memory for me. I reached for an issue of Glamour magazine that had come in the mail thinking I would read it to relax in bed. My friend April, followed by the rest of the women I lived with approached me with a sense of urgency and seriousness I had never seen in them before. They told me sternly to call my mother, or maybe they said to go call home. Those two things have since lost their nuance, but that night they would have meant something different. It was 1996 and cell phones were not a thing yet. I had a phone line in my room but the house also had a house line. My mom had called everywhere trying to find me and make sure I wasn’t alone when I heard the news. My friends already knew and they were figuring how to handle their own emotions about what had happened, having never experienced anything like this before. They couldn’t get in touch with me until I came home but they stood in support, waiting to usher me to the phone.
I went to my room and called home as my friends hovered outside the door. I already sensed something terrible had happened. My mom answered the phone, a totally different voice on her than I had ever heard. Something has happened to Daddy. He had been flying that day so right away I knew. For a moment I hoped for the best — he was in the hospital, a broken leg, a coma, brain damage. I also hoped that she was calling about a grandparent, a family friend, anyone but him. Even in my hope that it was a different severity of terrible news, I knew in my heart it was the most critical, the most severe, my father had died in a plane crash.
As soon as I learned that my father’s plane had crashed and he was dead my friends surrounded me. More friends came over. Someone helped me arrange the details, someone packed a bag for me. I would fly to Boston the next morning. I would get on a plane less than 24 hours after my father had been killed on that same airline. Sara would fly with me. The airline would send a limo, give me lounge access, and fly us first class for my first time ever. It was the most surreal experience. I sat in first class crying most of the five hour flight, wondering if the people around me knew why I was in first class and what had happened.
Upon landing my mother picked me up with my fathers best friend. Or maybe it was just his friend, another detail I only sort of remember. Five years later in September another plane crash would alter the world for everyone, but that had not happened yet so I was greeted right at the gate. I don’t remember the drive home but upon my arrival it felt like hundreds of people were at my house. My then 17 year old brother was very popular and almost the entire senior class of Lexington High School was at the house, or so it seemed, and all the girls were crying. I remember thinking “go home and cry to your dad”. The house felt like it wasn’t mine anymore, it had changed in an instant, maybe it would never feel like home again. I went up to my room on the third floor and listened to Nine Inch Nails really loud and wondered how the rest of life would be.
Over the next few days a colleague of my fathers would take me to the mall to buy a brown suit for the funeral. I would give a eulogy and ponder who would walk me down the aisle at my wedding, a far off milestone but one I couldn’t imagine without my dad. I ate a lot of the plum tart a neighbor had dropped off, so much that I think she made me a second one. Friends came over constantly, though most of them were my brothers or my mothers. My two best friends from high school and some more of my friends from college flew home to be with me since my life was already no longer in Boston. My grandparents were shocked and sad and I didn’t know how to balance their sadness with my own. The house felt both full and empty. I worried about what would happen next, my life no longer followed the map I had been using — would I go back to school in California? Would we run out of money? Would we still feel like a family? Would I ever be happy and whole again? And the stages of grief kicked in, anger hit me hardcore. Guilt hit me — my father had been flying back from visiting me in LA.
In the days and weeks and years to come the future unfolded. After grief and tears and sorrow we found a new kind of family core. I went back to college that year right after Thanksgiving to that great family of friends that had surrounded me in love that night, many of whom still surround me now. At the end of my senior year I graduated and got a job, moving to a beach apartment in LA with my best friend. Many years later my nephew was born to my brother and made me feel like my family was whole again. Years after that my mother walked me down the aisle as I got married with several of those same friends standing by my side. Now I have a daughter who has my father’s exact dimpled chin, a son named for him and a younger daughter whose birth was such a miracle it made me feel like I was finally granted an impossible wish.
Twenty five years later as we approach November I find myself having trouble sleeping thinking about the life I had and the life I lost on that night. I consider how blessed and full my life is, and how I wouldn’t want to change much about it, but I would trade many things to do over November 19th 1996 and make sure my father didn’t get on that plane if I could. I now live in my own house in California that has a mother and a father and is filled with children and friends and laughter. My mother comes and visits all the time and feels complete in the love of her grandchildren.
Most of the time I feel resilient and proud of my ability to pick myself up and keep on going. I’m glad I went back to college and didn’t get lost in my grief and guilt and anger. I figured out how to merge the path I was on with the path I got dealt and I learned to carry on. But I carry the wounds of a person who realizes that life can change in a single moment. I learned this young, but as humans we learn this over and over. The shock and change of the trajectory of my life on that day in 1996 shaped every other experience that I have had . It taught me that this life is full of losses and gains, grief and joy and there is beauty in the way that tragedy can mold us.