- Mom

Dad took a couple of steps forward toward the clumps of wreckage and twisted metal that the tiny light danced over and laid strewn along our path of travel.  The earth had been freshly churned up here, confirming to dad that this was in fact where we had come from.  He peered into the dark, scanning the area before him as best he could with his one good eye, which wasn’t doing so well.  He took a few more steps, when suddenly he caught a glint of soft color on the ground that did not appear to be just wreckage.  Curious by the sight, his mind didn’t let him think about what it could be.

He took a few more steps, until he could barely make out the shape first appearing as a lump lying on the earth.  He didn’t comprehend what he saw at first as he moved closer and waved the small beam of the pen light over it. 

But his brain began to grip the image as it resolved, then like a sledge hammer the reality hit him, spinning the freezing, dark world that engulfed them both.  For a moment, all else around him was shut out.

Mom lay on her abdomen, her upper body rotated over onto her left side facing away from him in a contorted and unnatural way.  Her legs were spread shoulder-width apart, with the left leg bent at the knee at about a 45 degree angle and draped across the back of her other ankle.  Her left arm extended out from under her away from her face as if she reached to touch something just beyond her grasp.  Her right arm was wrapped around her face, cradling her head.  Her fingers from that hand protruded from her hair which was all messed up and obscured her face so all he could see of her features was her exposed ear. 

There was what appeared to be blood on her hair, but he could not tell from where he stood the extent of the injury.  The powder blue suit she wore was tattered and smeared with mud and other stains.

She had not so much been thrown from the plane as she had been flung from it, and then plunged into the cold fertile earth like a projectile, into a place she could have never imagined. 

He was consumed in the moment by the physical incarnation of his worst fear. 

“Char!!” he cried as it became clear that what he saw was indeed his wife.  He stumbled over and dropped to his knees beside her.

            He raised his hands to her, but for a moment hesitated to touch.  He already knew she was probably dead, although he would not allow the thought to enter his head just then.  He gently took her arm and pulled it away from her head to get a better look at her face and try to ascertain how badly she was hurt.  Her eyes were closed, he could see, and he was suddenly struck by how peaceful she looked. 

Like she was only sleeping.

He gently brushed the matted hair out of the way, caressing her cheek and whispering her name, but she did not move.  Even so, he could still feel some warmth from her body.  Still hopeful, he started to roll her over so he could open her airway to try to see if she was breathing and to attempt CPR if she wasn’t.  But that hope was quickly obliterated as he reached under her head to move it around to where he could do some good. 

As he began to lift her, his fingers slipped on her blood and slid into wet, soft tissue on the other side of her head.  He held her there, and with his other hand gently rolled her the rest of the way over onto her back.  Shock turned to horror as he realized that his fingers had entered a ghastly hole where the left side of her forehead should have been.  Most of it was now gone, and her deformed skull turned her lower face on that side into a twisted and unnatural mask where it been pressed against the ground.  It now grimaced at him and was rigid and purple with trauma. 

He recoiled as the reality of the image gripped him.  The blood from the horrible wound clung to his fingers and began to cool as he pulled them away.  He could not even try to save her.  She was gone.  He could now only stare at her.

He slumped backwards to sit on the ground facing her, stunned.  He squeezed his eyes closed, and clutched his face.  He was overcome so completely and felt the weight of it began to press on his sanity.  He sat shaking under it for a moment, but then remembered his kids.  He knew that if he gave into the horror of the reality there before him, he would be reduced to a blathering slob unable to function at all…and then we would all die.

And he wasn’t going to let that happen.   

         He could only hear the thud of his pulse in his ears.  He opened his eyes and moved beside her to attempt to move her into a more dignified state - what dignity there was to be found here.  He took very little comfort in that from the looks of the wound she had died quickly, probably instantaneously. 

He would find little comfort later when he found out it was a piece of the left prop that had been torn off when we hit the first tree that killed her.  It turned out it had spared his own head twice by mere centimeters as it ricocheted like a bullet around the interior of the airplane before it had ripped through her head just before she was ejected. 

Now he held her still warm hand and squeezed his eyes, trying to maintain some speck of composure, trying to not think about what the hell he’d do now.  Trying not to comprehend the extent of the hole that had just been torn into our lives, like the hole in the airplane.  He took a deep breath of the cold dead air that mingled with the vapor of her cooling blood as it thickened and soaked slowly into the ground.  It would soon freeze her solidly to it.

          Snapping himself together as best he could with a shake of his head he opened his eyes again, looking down on her.  There was nothing more he could do.  He gently placed her hand back on the frozen ground beside her, and bent down till he felt the press of her cheek on his lips.  He would have cried, would have stayed and mourned her, but there was just no time for it now.  He still had a family and they needed him, now more than ever.  He would not let them down now, for mom if no one else. 

 "I'm sorry," he whispered close to her face, then raised himself painfully to his feet, turning his attention to the task now at hand.  He made his way back to the plane. 

As he climbed back into the passenger seat, painfully aware that it was the last place he saw mom alive, Chris looked at him hopefully.  Dad said nothing.  He just slumped back and stared out into the darkness.  Chris looked back out into the darkness too.  They both sat in silence. 

Time ticked away.