Freefall in Five Stages

     KA-WHONK!

     The Delta Airlines Boeing 747 suddenly seemed to fall a few feet in the air, causing every passenger’s stomach to drop sickeningly.  As the flight stabilized, agitated murmurs began to fill the air as nervous passengers vocalized their curiosity as to what was going on.  Soon after, the intercom buzzed.

     “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.  We’ve just entered an area of rather heavy turbulence, so the ride may get a little bit rough.  You’ll notice that the ‘Fasten Seatbelt’ light is now lit, so if you would all please buckle up, I’m sure we’ll all have a nice, pleasant flight once we’ve gotten clear of the turbulence, which should be about the time we begin our final approach.”

     A few of the agitated murmurs took on a genuine note of worry as some of the more nervous flyers began to seriously consider the possibility of a plane crash in their near future.  There was at least one passenger, however, who remained perfectly calm.  George McHenry was seated next to a window just off the starboard wing, and as the first wave of turbulence buffeted the plane, he looked out the window and checked his watch.  An international businessman, he was quite the seasoned flyer, and he would be damned if he let a little bit of turbulence ruin his day.  He just hoped it didn’t delay their arrival time in Chicago.  

     The business conference in Los Angeles had been a major triumph, he reflected.  He had managed to convince the partners in a multimillion dollar toy company to sign on with his advertising firm.  This deal would be a great boon to the firm—the toy company was now their biggest client.  He would probably get a promotion out of it… maybe even a bigger office, finally.  This promotion could also mean an upward move into a higher management position, and that would mean no more (or at least considerably less) of this perpetually mobile lifestyle that had stolen him away from his family for the past year or two.  He would finally have more time to focus on being a proper father to his children and a proper husband to his wife again.

     But none of that really mattered to him at the moment.  What really mattered was that he was going home right now.  He was finally going to get to see his family again after three weeks of flying to one city or another with only abbreviated weekends at home with them.  With this final deal closed, he planned to use the month’s worth of vacation time he had stored up and be a stay-at-home dad for a little while.  He smiled contentedly at the thought—a month’s worth of relatively stress-free living…  And as long as the turbulence didn’t delay his arrival time, he would be perfectly content.  After all, he had an important appointment that he simply could not be late for: family dinner.

     His reflections were interrupted by a tapping on his shoulder, and he turned to encounter an old woman who had been seated next to him on this flight.

     “Aren’t you going to buckle up, son?” she asked him.  “The captain seemed to think it’d be a good idea.”

     “Lady,” George replied, “I’ve been on over a hundred flights just like this one.  Nine times out of ten we’ve hit some kind of turbulence.  It’s really nothing.  Just a few shakes and then we’re through—no harm done.  Besides, I’m much more comfortable with my seatbelt off.”

     The woman gave him that reproving look that only the aged have mastered then shrugged.

     “I’ll admit I don’t know much about airplanes,” she said.  “But that’s really no excuse for you to be condescending.  And if the captain tells me to fasten my seatbelt, I figure there’s a pretty good reason for it.  So I’m going to fasten my seatbelt.  If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.  Just don’t come crying to me if you get hurt.”

     George was momentarily taken aback and nearly apologized to the woman.  Instead, he decided that he wasn’t going to let anything get him down today.  After all, this was a special day for him.  So he merely nodded dismissively, then reached into his carry-on and pulled out the book he had been reading for this trip.  Pulling out the photograph of his family that he always used as a bookmark, he slowly caressed the faces of his wife, Karen, and their two children.  It wouldn’t be long now.  He’d be home and eating dinner with them, with no more overseas trips for the next month.  In fact, he would be home just in time for little Jack’s seventh birthday.  He quickly made a mental note to stop somewhere and pick up a gift on the way home from the airport.

     He tucked the photo into the back cover of the book and began reading.  It wasn’t the most artistic piece of fiction he had ever read, but the plot kept him guessing, and it was a quick and easy read—perfect for filling the five to ten minute breaks between business meetings.  He was just coming to a really exciting chase scene when the plane heeled over violently, throwing him up against the window.

     Dammit, he thought, rubbing the spot where his head had struck the  glass.  Now I’ve lost my place.

     He flipped the book open once more and began tracking down the page, looking for the point at which he had left off.  He found it and began reading once more, but soon his thoughts were occupied with his family again, and his eyes merely scanned the pages, his mind not absorbing anything that he was reading.  

     He didn’t really need the picture to see them.  He could call up each of their faces at will into his imagination, seeing his wife Karen’s beautiful smile, the glint of mischief she sometimes got in her eye when she was in a playful mood.  He could call up visions of his six-year-old son Jack running and playing in the park or tossing a baseball back and forth with him, and his three-year-old daughter Alyssa sitting in her room among stuffed animals and dolls, sometimes burying herself under her stuffed animals and hiding until George came in and “searched for her.”  He always loved to put on a show for her, pretending he didn’t immediately know where she was, looking in such unlikely places as her dresser drawers and her trash can (and ignoring the barely stifled giggles and visible tremors in the pile of stuffed animals) before finally pouncing on her, tickling fingers extended.

     He was startled once again by another sudden, violent drop, this time accompanied by the sound of straining metal.  An icy finger of fear penetrated George’s calm confidence, and he began fumbling for his seatbelt, doing his best not to make eye contact with his elderly neighbor.  One of the straps had fallen below his seat, and he had to contort his body slightly in order to reach it.  Bringing it back up, he was about to clip the two halves together when the plane pitched down sharply and seemed to bounce in midair.  The male half of the seatbelt slipped from his hand and fell back under the seat, and George began to reach for it once more.

     KA-CRACCCK!

     Before George realized anything had happened, the pressure bulkhead on the starboard side gave out and sheared away.  Having neglected to buckle himself in, he was sucked out with intense force and began falling through open air.  At first, the power of the vacuum and the pressure differential knocked him unconscious, but he was quickly roused by the sound of the wind rushing past him and the feel of his hair blowing back.

     Initially he didn’t believe it was happening, a sensation of surrealism overtook him that was heightened by his loss of consciousness during his rapid exit from the plane.  His mind simply could not be convinced that he was actually falling through the open air.  He looked up at the plane, smoking from one engine, but swiftly receding from sight.  Forcing his head down against the wind, he looked at the ground.  From this altitude he felt like he was just floating in space, even though the ground must be rushing up at him.  He could even make out the curvature of the Earth as he looked at the horizon.

     This isn’t real! he thought.  This can’t be real!  I hit my head harder than I thought when I got knocked against the window.  I’m unconscious and I’m dreaming.  I’ve had dreams like this before… the falling dreams.  You always wake up right before you hit the ground.  Any moment now I’m going to wake up jolting forward.  I’ll probably give that old lady a heart attack when I do.  Good thing I know CPR.

     He chuckled at this thought as he envisioned the expression on her face as he lurched forward in his seat, his body reacting to a perceived momentum that wasn’t actually there.  Wholly convinced that this was, in fact, a dream, he decided to enjoy it while it lasted.  He started trying to find landmarks in the patchwork ground below him.  After he had traced the southern bay of Lake Michigan, including the shorelines of Illinois and Indiana, he decided to try some aerobatic tricks.  Hugging his arms close to his body, he felt himself accelerate into a dive.  The speed was thrilling—he had to shut his eyes against the wind, and the slight jolt he experienced when the drag rapidly cut his speed as he flared his arms and legs back out made him laugh out loud with joy.  But that laughter faded fast as he was filled with an indefinable sense of dread.  Something was wrong.  The screaming voice in the back of his mind wouldn’t let him continue this surrender to fantasy.

     I’m not waking up...  I should have awakened by now.  Besides, that jolt kind of made my head hurt a little… you’re not supposed to feel anything in dreams, are you?

     Horror filled him as he finally came to grips with the fact that this was no dream.  This was real… all too real.  He wasn’t safely unconscious aboard the plane; he was careening very unsafely toward the ground.  Feeling lost and alone in the clear blue sky, he turned to the only conceivable option his mind saw open.

     “God?” he said haltingly.  “I’ve never really done this before, so if you’re up there, please bear with me.  We both know that I’ve never really believed in You.  I’ve always believed that I was the master of my own destiny.  Well, now that self-mastery is pretty much meaningless… I may be able to control my own actions, but I can’t control the world around me… a world that seems hell-bent on killing me right now.  And at the moment, I am at its mercy.

     “So now I turn to You, in what I’m reasonably sure are going to be the last few moments of my corporeal existence.  I ask You humbly, and from the bottom of my heart, to please help me out here.  If You’re up there listening, please save me from this fate that I’m spiraling toward.  If You do, I swear to you on my honor as an Eagle Scout that I will be Your faithful and humble servant for the rest of my life.  I’ll spend more time with my family, and I’ll actually attend church with my wife and kids.  I may not have lived my life according to Your will thus far, but if You will give me the chance, I swear that I will for the rest of my days.”

     His desperate prayer finished, George closed his eyes and hoped against all reasonable hope that his falling would magically slow and he would find himself safe on the ground once more.  Or maybe a parachute would suddenly appear strapped to his back.  He needed that sort of miracle right now, and he figured that if there really was a loving God listening to his prayer, a suitable miracle would soon come to pass.  After several seconds with no results, despair began to fill him once again, intensifying with each passing moment.  He was soon overcome with feelings of helplessness and utter solitude.  Desperate to do something, anything at all, he lashed out, his voice dripping with wrath.

     “To Hell with You anyway, God!” he shouted at the air around him.  “I never truly did believe in You, and it looks like I was right all along!  So fuck religion, and fuck You!  No loving God would do this shit!  This can’t just be a punishment for me and my lack of faith, because my family has to live through the loss, too!  Where does that fit in with Your ‘plan for everyone,’ huh?  Why me?  Why my family?  How do they deserve the pain that this will put them through?  The truth is that it’s because You don’t really exist.  There’s no underlying ‘plan’ for anyone, because there’s no planner to create it in the first place.  You really aren’t anything more than an ignorant people’s pipe dream after all!”

     He took a couple of deep breaths, and then his ire focused itself on a new target.

     “Fuck that plane!  No, better yet… Fuck the manufacturers of that plane!  I wonder what bean counter had the bright idea that cheap mass production would be a good idea for something that hundreds of people entrust their lives to on a daily basis!  Well, the system failed, you bastards!  But will you learn anything from it?  Probably not!  So this whole thing… my death… is in vain!  Pointless!”

     “Fuck that old lady on the plane, too!  She was so smug about obeying the seatbelt light.  Well I hope you’re happy up there, still on the plane!  Turns out you were right about the fucking seatbelt!  How does it feel, bitch?

     “And while I’m at it, fuck me, too!  That lady may have been smug, but I was even smugger.  If I’d taken the three seconds to strap my fucking seatbelt, I wouldn’t be falling to my death right now!  But I had to be so goddamned sure of myself.  ‘Oh, no, the plane couldn’t possibly be in any real danger… the seatbelt light is just an unnecessary precaution.’  Fucking idiot!”

     He shook his head in disgust at himself.  Tears of rage and frustration stung his eyes as they blew into the wind and a scream of anger, fear, and pain tore from him.

     “It’s just not fair!” he railed.  “I was going home.  I was finally going to get to see my family again.  I’ve been away from home for nearly a month straight.  All I wanted was to see my wife and kids again.  I wanted to be a better dad for them… like I used to be before that last promotion got me stuck zipping back and forth across the world…  I even had plans for a family trip to Disney World!  But now…”

     His tone softened and he trailed off as the full implication of this thoughts finally struck home for the first time.  As he fell nearer and nearer the ground, he erupted in bitter, uncontrollable tears that dried in the wind as quickly as they left his eyes.

     But now I’ll never see any of them again.  I won’t be there for them when they need me.  I won’t be around to help Karen raise the children.  I won’t be there for the ballgames or the recitals.  I won’t be there to teach my kids to drive, or see them graduate from high school or college.  I won’t be around to watch my children make lives of their own.  I won’t be there to see Karen’s youthful beauty mature and deepen like fine wine.  I won’t be there to enjoy our nights of passion, squeezed between one child or the other’s demands on our time.  I haven’t truly accomplished anything, and leaving my family like this—without a father, without a husband, without solid financial security—renders my life utterly meaningless…

     He continued sobbing as he fell.  By now his entire face was painfully chapped, but he kept crying, engulfed in the depths of hopelessness and loss that he felt.  Eventually his sorrow gave way to a sense of empty numbness, and with this numbness came a certain clarity of thought, allowing him to finally think about his situation rationally.  This newfound rationality allowed him to begin coming to terms with the finality of his position, and as he thought things through with a clear head, he discovered that he was filled with a sense of peace.

     Karen is a strong woman, he thought.  It will be hard for her at first, but I know she’ll move on eventually and find happiness.  She may even find it in her heart to remarry someday… and that is a strangely comforting thought right now.  I still can’t help hating the way things are ending for me, but I suppose that’s natural in any untimely death.  There are just so many things left that I had wanted to do before I died.  And even though I suppose I can technically cross sky diving off the list, it’s still a disappointment, and it saddens me to leave so much in my life unfinished, both personally and professionally.  But there truly is nothing I can do to change what is happening.  It’s my time, and all I can do now is let it happen.

     It won’t be long now, he thought as he stretched out his arms and closed his eyes, determined to derive at least some enjoyment from his last living moments.

     I’m ready…

     Looking down one last time, he sighed in a mixture of disgust and morbid humor.

     Just my luck… he thought, laughing at the bitter ironies of life as he swiftly descended into the busy thoroughfare of Interstate 55.  The cars below swiftly grew larger, and the last thing George saw was the flash of a bewildered face staring out at him from behind a steering wheel.  Then everything stopped.