Airports. I’ve been in them a lot lately, and I’ve recognized a pattern. They make me cry. Or at least now they do. This, I discovered several days ago in Terminal B of the Denver airport. Cycling through memories has replaced reading a book while I wait at the boarding gate. They hit me hard, both the beautiful and the difficult. They make me cry.
The last time I flew with Emery and her then-3-year-old and 5-year-old children, Emery insisted on driving to the airport. She wanted to control the schedule, and, as the one with two small children, she had earned that right. She also wanted to leave at least an hour later than I would have, which made me nervous. I like to be early, really early, for the “just in case” situations that have yet to happen.
We drove row by row through the parking garage at the Denver airport for longer than I was comfortable with. Emery reassured me that we were fine on time, but after 30 minutes of driving up and down full row after full row, she said we probably should have left earlier, and that was when the real panic set in for me. We eventually found a spot and, loaded down with luggage and two children, rushed to our gate, arriving ten minutes before boarding. Emery told me her timing was perfect because, when she travels with her children, she likes to cut it as close as she can given the limited patience kids have with travel. As a mom, I understood. As someone who is always early, I didn’t, but I loved traveling with Emery, anxiety and all. She was teaching me patience with each of our trips, although I still can’t let go of my “can’t be there too early” timeline.
Today, while I waited at the same airport, with an hour and a half to spare, I wondered how many flights Emery and I had taken together. How many places? How many different airports?
The day after Emery died, my sons and I were at the Denver airport. Thomas was flying to his home in Portland, and Grant and I were flying to LA. My daughters-in-law had been by themselves during the horrific 2 1/2 days, with constant updates on Emery’s condition via phone calls, texts, and FaceTimes. We needed each other more than ever. We needed to meet each other at doorways with tearful embraces. When we returned to Boulder two days later, we would spend the next 3 1/2 weeks together in a rented house. Our non-Jewish family sitting shiva.
While we were returning the rental car Thomas and Grant had gotten when they arrived, the attendant, in a happy, overly cheerful voice, asked us how our trip had been. Thomas responded, “Not great,” and left it at that. The agent wasn’t satisfied and continued, “How can anyone come to Colorado and not have a great time?” Thomas looked at Grant and me, shook his head, and started unloading our luggage from the car without responding. That odd feeling that life had continued without stopping after our trauma, hit hard. He was only doing his job.
When Grant and I found our seats at the gate, only a few gates down from where Thomas was, all the passengers seated near us were mothers and daughters traveling together. Or at least that’s what it looked like to me, given the emotional state I was in. So much of me was missing. I didn’t feel like a whole person. I was weary. I was lost. I couldn’t have made it through TSA, onto the train, and to the gate without Grant and Thomas directing me. I didn’t hold back my tears. Grant put his arm around me, and maybe he was also crying. I don’t remember. I was carrying the unfathomable burden of a mother’s worst nightmare, and my sons had lost their only sister. We were pacing through this new version of our lives with open wounds of grief, confused and still trying to make sense of what had happened. It had taken me multiple tries to book Grant and my flight the day before, hours after Emery died. Although booking flights was something I had done hundreds of times before, after several attempts, I ended up calling the airlines and letting them do it for me. The next day, Thomas and Grant guided me through the traveling process the following day. It’s no wonder airports make me cry. Those traumatic moments now live in every cell of my body.
The unseen burden of missing is my other piece of luggage, which I’m dragging behind me through TSA, to the gate, and onto the plane. It has me in tears at gate 49, an hour and a half before my flight. I laugh through the tears. Emery wouldn’t have even left her house yet had she been on the flight.
John Denver’s Take Me Home starts playing. Maybe it always plays, given that it is the Denver Airport, but today was the first time I heard it, and it hit me hard enough to stop typing this essay on my phone and listen. Emery loved John Denver. She also loved Elton John and Billy Joel, and once told me she had the musical tastes of someone at least 30 years older than she was. “Like me, Emery?” “ Exactly, Mom. Like you.” When she was a freshman in college, she asked me to go to a concert with her, which, along with the thoughtful gesture of inviting me, meant I would be the one to buy the tickets. She wanted to see Elton John and Billy Joel. Again, the musical taste of someone twice her age. As we were walking to the concert hall, I was confused as to which one it was being held in. Emery said, “Just follow the Land’s End jackets, Mom. They know where they’re going.” I’m not sure if there were any Land’s End jacket-wearing people on the crowded sidewalks, but I knew exactly what she was saying. It was a middle-aged crowd who knew the words to every song and sang along, my 19-year-old daughter included. She was an old soul in every sense of the word, including her taste in music.
Now I’m crying, and people are staring, and honestly, I’m so used to it that I don’t bother covering my face. I watch people walking down the concourse, wondering what their stories are and where they are going. Making up stories about the travelers was something Emery and I were very good at, a pastime that originated with my sisters and me. This time, my made-up stories were derailed by a curiosity I had never seen before at the airport. Several people, I’m guessing in their 20s, were clutching stuffed animals as they made their way to their gates. Heads bowed over a cell phone had been replaced by stuffed animals held tightly to the chest, like the ones my granddaughters would carry. It looked strange, but at the same time, it made sense because it represented comfort. I don’t own a stuffed animal, but if I did, it’s possible I’d be taking it out of my pack about now.
I have an overpacked backpack and a carry-on, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll be able to lift them into the overhead bin given their weight, but the heaviest load is the one no one can see I’m carrying: the weight of carrying love and grief at the same time. I think about the early days traveling with Emery and having her lead us to baggage claim upon arrival. I wanted her to feel comfortable navigating airports, and finding our way to the baggage claim seemed like an easy start. I was successful. Emery became more confident with airports and schedules than I’ve ever been.
Passengers begin lining up to board, and I take my place in the line, slowly making my way to the counter, where my boarding pass is scanned. I walk down the long jetway, wondering how many jetways I’ve walked down in the past 16 months. Too many. Not enough. I’ve left more than I have stayed because, even with the difficulties airports now present for me, leaving is still easier than staying.
I make my way to my seat, always by the window, and turn away from the passenger seated next to me. Tears flow down my cheeks while I look out at the familiar hive of ground activity on the tarmac. Countless flights to various destinations, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.
There is no mystery as to my new relationships with airports or why they have become so difficult for me, yet it is still hard for me to admit.
I’m going on without her.