Angel of Death

Bethany and I met the Angel of Death at about thirty thousand feet somewhere over the state of Missouri. We’re still alive, obviously, so it was more of a conversational “meet and greet” instead of a real “get to know you” encounter.

I’m not surprised at anyone we strike up a conversation with. Bethany, my mother, and my mother in law are all the kind of people who actually listen when someone tells them something, which makes them great to go to funerals with, because they somehow know exactly what to say, and how to say it.

When I try to be like that I feel like a sham, a fake, or I try too hard.

Bethany wasn’t officially my wife when we met the Angel of Death. We were in graduate school in Lincoln, Nebraska. We were on a plane headed back to Mississippi to get married. This was an exciting time for us, but you wouldn’t know it looking at my fiancée. She is a not her normally, chirpy self on a plane. That’s because she has to spend the entire flight concentrating on keeping the plane in the air. She has taken on that responsibility for everyone else on board, and if we go down in flames, or if the wings are loaded with ice, then it will be her fault.

Flying would be perfect in her mind if someone could design a plane that made no noise, and was able to always fly in a straight line. She doesn’t understand why a machine that is capable of lifting two hundred people into the air, flying them a thousand miles at five hundred miles per hour, then landing them safely back on the ground, can’t make those last few modifications toward perfection.

So she remains vigilant from the moment she gets on the plane to anything she feels may be irregular or out of the norm, and never hesitates to push her alarm button to notify the stewardess or even the pilot, if she can get past the locked door, to let them know about our impending doom.

                                               

You would think the Angel of Death would take a more sinister form on a commercial flight, maybe some nutty guy with a shoe bomb, somebody who locked all the bathroom doors, or even a stewardess who was stingy with the peanuts.

Not so. We were in a row with three seats. I had the aisle, Bethany was in the middle, and the Angel of Death got the window seat. Luckily, leg room wasn’t a problem for this demon of death; she was short, gray-haired, and dressed comfortably upper middle class. She was holding a novel with a crossword puzzle sticking out of it. She looked kind of like an editor. 

Now, my mother, mother in law, and my wife all see it as their duty to engage someone who is sitting next to them on a two hour flight. They would think it rude not to. While all three might engage any given stranger at any given time, it is not likely that they’ll come back with the same report.

My mother in law does it more like a history professor. She’ll spend a few moments with the people she did not know, then report, “I’ve been talking to Gene and Myrtle Norman from Atlanta. Gene’s in sales, Myrtle’s a part time decorator. They have two children, one is in politics and he works in DC, and the other fellow may be in some kind treatment facility. It sounded like a problem with alcohol, but I’m not sure.”

My mother will meet the same two strangers and come back with a more surfacy report, and generally one that seems to benefit her in some way. “That’s Myrtle and her husband. She’s a decorator and thinks I should switch out the leather couch with some kind of patterned one. She says neutral colors are out, and she’s also a big fan of Turkish rugs.”

Bethany will talk to the same two people and it will turn into a come-to-Jesus, kumbaya styled pow-wow. The three of them will huddle together. They will cry on her shoulder. She will cry with them. It will take hours. Then she’ll turn to me and mumble, “Those two are friggin crazy.”

For some reason, my wife is an everyman’s Dr. Phil.  People will tell her things they’ll barely admit to themselves. And they’ll do it anywhere. A bathroom. A restaurant. It can even happen at thirty thousand feet.

But, given that she had to guide the airplane all the way to Memphis that day, my wife’s initial greeting to the Angel of Death was hardly her usual one. They exchanged a low-key hello. There was silence for a few seconds, the woman had the novel open in her lap, then she asked if we were going on vacation.

My fiancée said, “Sort of. We’re going home to get married.”

The Angel of Death, who evidently was borrowing the Earthly name Dorothy, responded, “My husband died of cancer.”

This was not the usual conversational volley you get receive after telling someone you’re on your way to get married. My fiancée was so thrown by the response the plane turned to the left the slightest bit. Bethany put her focus back on guiding the plane as she offered her condolences to Dorothy.

Dorothy nodded, then shrugged. “Our oldest son committed suicide.”

Now Bethany went into full consoling mode. I was forgotten. The fate of the plane became secondary. She turned in her seat and placed her hand on Dorothy’s arm, a physical gesture to let her know it was OK, and Dorothy let go with her story, and in a voice that even I could hear. In addition to losing a husband to cancer and a son to suicide, Dorothy had another son in prison and another son who’d been killed in a car wreck. And this was all before cabin service. Armed with a ginger ale, (I’d been planning on getting champagne or wine but that didn’t seem appropriate now) Dorothy began relaying a life filled with tragedy and sadness.

It went on and on, Dorothy sharing some God awful occurrence, and my wife offering some well wishing words of comfort. Dorothy never stopped, and my wife-to-be could not bring herself to disengage. Their exchange got to be like banjoes dueling between the promise of hope, and the reality of despair. If my fiancée had been trying to keep the plane in the air, I think this woman was praying we’d go down in flames, just so she could add it to her repertoire of heartbreak.

            I was hitting some personal turbulence and descending into the emotional dumps myself. What had begun as a hopeful flight toward our lifelong commitment was dissolving into a descent into life’s potential hell. This was what Bethany and I would face together? A life that was nothing but loss, death, and sorrow?

Once she had exhausted the actual events that had made her life terrible, Dorothy started in with general statements that she’d picked up while serving as life’s doormat. It was getting creepier and creepier. “Enjoy the good times,” Dorothy told us. “Because life is full of heartbreak.”

            “I know,” my fiancée said, having long since run shy of appropriate platitudes for her responses.

            “It’ll surprise you. You’ll be going along, happy as a lark, then out of nowhere, it’ll all be gone.”

            “You have to enjoy the good times,” Bethany said, looping back to Dorothy’s advice.

            “And the good times don’t last nearly as long as they should.”

            “Life is short,” my fiancée said.

            “Sometimes you don’t even realize those were supposed to be the good times. It’s not until things are really, really bad that you even know that.”

            “Wow,” Bethany said. 

“You just can’t deny death,” Dorothy said.

“Nope,” Bethany said. “Or taxes.”

                       

After two hours with the Angel of Death, my fiancée was too exhausted to land the plane, even sleeping on my arm the last ten minutes of the flight. Once we were on the ground, I carried Dorothy’s suitcase for her.

 “And where did you say the two of you were going?” Dorothy said when I handed off her bag in the crowded terminal.

“Going to get married,” my wife said.

Dorothy frowned even as she said, “How nice.” Like maybe she was realizing what we were doing for the first time, and now she was piecing back together her words of the last two hours. But she couldn’t let death go. She had to get in one last negative word. “My husband and I got a divorce.”

I had not spoken to Dorothy the whole time, but now I could not hold my tongue. “Hold it a second. I thought you said he died of cancer.”

“He did. Throat cancer. After he ran off with his receptionist. Served the sorry bastard right.”

Then Dorothy hunched her shoulders and walked along in a defeated shuffle. Perhaps she was an angel at one time, but she’d seen too much heartbreak in her life and now death kept her firmly in its clutches as she trudged out of sight, pulling her carryon luggage behind her.