Flying

An airplane, twenty-five thousand feet over the heartland. The man is tired but cannot sleep. The plane rocks gently with turbulence and the man is suddenly aware of his life. Not of the day to day activities like eating and brushing his hair, but of other things. He is getting older, he has a young son at home, and he is hurtling through the sky at 600 miles per hour inside of a tin can. The man tries to occupy himself, first with a book, then with a magazine, finally with his I-pod. No relief. The man peers out the window and watches the clouds, then underneath the clouds, the ground. The man is flying west, over Pennsylvania, and the fruited plains stretch out before him. There are dots far below. These may be houses, or office buildings, or factories. Inside there are people. There is no difference between the man in the plane and the people in the buildings. Correction. There are small differences. But the differences are insignificant. All suffer. All will die. Life is a terminal condition. There is no cure.

The luckiest among them will scurry around for 70 odd years doing this and that before their bodies succumb to sickness and they die. At their funerals, people will say nice things about them and then these people will return to their buildings to go on with their own lives. The people try not to think about the fact that one day there will be another funeral where, hopefully, people will gather to say nice things about them.

Not all are lucky. Some will die early. Accidents, disease, sudden medical complications. The man knows about sudden medical complications. They caused the death of the man’s wife. She was giving birth to the man’s son and then died. Unforeseeable, they said. One in a million, they said. Even then, standing at the foot of the bed with his hand on the button of the respirator, the man knew that the last thing one could say about death was that it was unforeseeable. Only unexpected.

The man remembers. He remembers leaving his wife’s room and walking to the elevator. He remembers taking the elevator to the nursery, picking up his son and going home. He remembers that the day was cold. He carries his son into the house quickly and looks into his eyes. Love. Acceptance. Determination.

The man’s biggest fear is that he will be one of the unlucky ones. This fear gnaws at him in strange places, like when he is riding in airplanes twenty-five thousand feet over the heartland. It pops up in his mind when he is driving a car, crossing the street, and every night before he goes to bed. The man knows of impermanence. He has seen life’s fragility first hand. He worries for his son.

Home. Far below and far away. The man’s son is almost two. The man lives with a woman and her son. The man loves the woman and she him. They are a family. The man is happy; he has found a person to share his life with. His son is happy; he has found a brother. Things have gone well-better than he ever hoped for. And yet. Even in his happiness the man knows. He knows that at any moment it could end. But not right now. Right now, sailing above the clouds, the man is very much alive.