Tonight's picture was taken in March of 2003. Mattie was 11 months old and it was his first plane trip and visit to Los Angeles to see my parents. I had a conference to attend in Anaheim and it was the perfect reason to make it a family trip. I wasn't sure how Mattie was going to handle the flight. But he was FULLY on and took it all in and was awake the whole time. This photo was taken at the LA Zoo, as you can see with my favorites.... the elephants in the background.
Quote of the day: Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. ~ Jamie Paolinetti
Today did not go at all like I suspected. I do not like flying at all and I got up early this morning and had to get to the airport on my own since Peter was still in Boston. In many ways I rely on Peter especially in times when I get anxious. Which now a days, IS OFTEN. Though Peter wasn't physically with me, he was with me virtually. He was up with me at 4am, checking to make sure I got up and moving and then made sure my transportation picked me up in time to get me to the airport. He followed me all the way onto the plane.
However, it was once on the plane that the unexpected happened. First off we boarded the plane late since there was a previous passenger "accident" on it that needed a professional cleaning crew to manage. Got to love that announcement, especially when they tell you the row in which the accident occurred in! All I knew was, I was happy to be twenty rows up from where it was centered! Yet as the "accident" was announced you could hear the silence among the passengers waiting to board the plane. Literally you could almost hear the wheels in their heads spinning, trying to figure out whether they should be disgusted, scared, or what about this information! The silence was pervasive, noticeable, and seemed long lasting. Eventually we all pulled out of it.
When I finally boarded, I did not even get to sit for two seconds before a fellow passenger asked me to switch seats with him so his wife could sit next to him. So I complied and took his wife's seat two rows up. Minutes later, a young man came to sit next to me in the middle seat. I did not pay much attention to him since I was quite tired. Instead, I was reading a magazine. After the plane took off, and the flight attendant came around to offer us a beverage, I noticed my seat mate ordered a rum and coke at 8:30am. I did not say anything, but the flight attendant looked at him. His response to the flight attendant was...... "well for me it is the evening!" No one seemed interested in his response. No one I guess, other than me. So I turned to him and asked him where he was flying from. At which point he told me he was traveling from Afghanistan. Naturally my next question was, are you serving in the military? At one time he was and was deployed in Iraq but now he is a contractor. In any case, he was flying home to California today to visit his wife and two children.
Our conversation could have stopped right there and then. But it did not. The flight from Washington, DC to Los Angeles is five hours and ten minutes. We spoke for that ENTIRE time. I learned all about his life, his upbringing, his parents, his career, his work overseas, the challenges he lives with, his living conditions, and the impact of 6 month contracts in Afghanistan on a marriage. He works six months and then comes home for a month and then repeats the cycle all over again. Coming home is of course wonderful, but it is a transition that is hard on both sides. The family at home gets used to operating without a father figure and when their dad comes home, it is an adjustment to shuffle roles. Of course for my seat mate, in a way things change and evolve over six months for his family and he has to play catch up when he comes back home and he is always afraid that he may not be accepted and fit in.
I had the wonderful opportunity to see some of the photos he took in Afghanistan and one of the creatures he introduced me to today was the Camel Spider. These things live on camels, which freely roam. These spiders are aggressive, can give a terrible sting/bite, and they have to be vigilant about keeping them out of their sleeping quarters. When I saw photos of his conditions and the dust and sand that surrounded him on a daily basis, I told him I wasn't sure how he could manage living there six months at a time. I could tell that his lungs have been affected as he has an asthmatic wheeze which he says he never had before. But after seeing photos of the Dust Devil storms, this was an eye opener to me and explained his symptoms.
I learned a great deal about the person I sat next to today, but in the process what I found so stimulating, enriching, and beautiful was talking to him truly confirmed how I have been feeling ALL ALONG. That trauma survivors share many aspects in common. He and I have very different traumatic experiences yet we are talking the EXACT same language. THE EXACT SAME, and because I could relate to what he was saying, I had an intuitive understanding for the feelings he wasn't actually expressing which enabled him to talk more freely. In fact, he told me today that he is typically very introverted and usually doesn't open up to people. When he told me this, I then told him my professional background. But I really do not credit my background to our conversation. I credit Mattie and my experience battling childhood cancer and dealing with Mattie's loss. I explained to him that Peter and I lost Mattie to cancer and that living in the PICU was my version of Afghanistan. I don't want to equate the two, and meant no disrespect. But that to me the PICU was like a war zone. The problem with leaving the war zone however is once back on solid ground NO ONE really understands you. Which is how I imagine he feels when he returns to the United States and back to his home environment. You could see my message struck a chord, and I hit several today. I also gave him my interpretation as to why he could never sleep on a plane. Which is something I typically don't do either. He asked me for my interpretation. Again, I really did not have a concrete theory, other than he lives in a hyper alert state, and therefore coming aboard an airplane surrounded by foreign people, where threats could potentially come from any one of us around him, would prevent him from letting his guard down. The whole environment of being confined in a tight space is anxiety provoking. He related.
As we continued talking, we shared commonalities which I absolutely loved! To know that I am NOT the only one who has these side effects after a trauma. That this is how we cope, protect ourselves, and manage in the world. We both won't watch violent movies! We prefer watching movies about grief and loss, and things that evoke sadness. Most of all we prefer having deeply meaningful conversations and avoid trite conversations. There were other aspects about our conversation that were also powerful, but this related to his story, and are not appropriate for this blog. What I do want to say however, is that I was meant to switch seats today on this airplane. I was meant to meet this former military man and to hear about his life journey. His life journey and my life journey are different, and yet something happened to us along the way that profoundly altered our lives. Certainly we could try to blunt it out as others do, drug it out, or pretend it doesn't exist and MOVE ON. We on the contrary do none of these things. What I learned is if I am with the right person, I can freely and eloquently discuss grief, my perspective on it, and how it influences my lens on life and my overall perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment