Being thankful

So I needed to take the past week to reflect on the events that took place a week ago before addressing them in the blog.  I even wasn't sure I wanted to address this in the blog, but in the end felt I wanted to record this because it's been a very important lesson for our family.  Sadly the lesson we gained was at the expense of two other families, for whom we feel much sadness and grief.

The story

Last Friday, March 23, began like almost any other day, except that John was up and out the door extra early (before I was even out of bed) for a 6am flight and I had taken the day off to spend with my Dad and Margaret who had just arrived the night before.  They were visiting us since Dad had just gotten back from his deployment in Africa and also to help me celebrate my birthday weekend.  Since I had the day off and family to help watch Evan, I started my 3-day weekend with a massage!  That was a well-needed treatment for my body that aches more each day that I carry around an ever-growing boy!

Then just before lunch time I got a call from John.  He informed me that there had been a plane crash in Longmont, but that he was fine and on the ground.  However, he also said that they were worried it was one of their airplanes at his flight school, as he was waiting on a plane to fly next that hadn't yet returned from its lesson.  This was unusual, but did occasionally happen for a lesson to go long.  I felt nervous and shaken that one of his fellow instructors could have been involved and asked who it was, learning it was Ryan (Brungardt).  I went to the online news to check out what had happened.  Upon seeing photos of the crash, my heart sank realizing that no one could have survived it.  I held out hope that it wasn't McAir's plane that Ryan and his student were flying, until I got a follow up call from John that it was indeed theirs.  They had been watching the news and seen a zoomed in view that showed part of the tail number, confirming to them it was their missing plane carrying Ryan and his student who had come in to just do a 2-year periodic flight review.  All this happened while that student's son was there with them waiting for his dad to come back from that flight so he could fly with Ryan next.  As the story continued to unfold, we learned that the crash was the result of an apparent mid-air collision, in which the other aircraft involved was flown by an FAA examiner that John, and many from his flight school, knew and had flown with before.  Her plane crashed near the Longmont airport, and she survived with minor injuries.

We couldn't believe what had happened.  There was a knot in my stomach and a ache in my heart.  And I knew that what I was feeling was only a fraction of what Ryan's wife was going through.  John has said Ryan was the safest pilot at the school.  It became clear to us that what most pilots know is a risk, but often think won't happen to them, could indeed happen.  John was out flying with a student at that time, and even though he is also a very safe pilot, flying in uncontrolled airspace is risky.

Between then and now

We have spent this past week going through many stages of grief.  For John it became clear that a risk that didn't bother him as much when he was a single young man, was a whole lot harder to swallow now as a married father.  We felt pain for Ryan's wife who had just lost her soul mate.  We had so many questions about how and why this happened; many of which are still unanswered.  We went through feelings of sadness that it could have been John.  We even went through feelings of loss for John's dream career, as he questioned whether he would ever want to fly again.

One week later, I can proudly say that John returned to the skies today, and will indeed continue his dream of being a pilot.  However, we have learned some valuable lessons from this tragedy.  First of all, we must be thankful for every day that we have.  We have decided that John will start to take Sundays off, so that we have at least one full day together as a family each week.  He had been working five days a week, including both Saturday and Sunday, which left me and Evan alone on the weekends.  This schedule allowed him to watch Evan on two weekdays when I was at work, but so we didn't have to put Evan in full-time daycare.  For now, he's going to go back at four days a week, but even if he chooses to go back to five days a week, we will just put Evan in daycare one more day, because we've learned that we value time together more than the financial advantages of an extra day of work or one less day of daycare.

We also learned that even though the risks in life are scary, we do not want to live our lives in fear.  We both knew this about ourselves all throughout the week, but we had to give ourselves time to heal from the shock of the accident and accept the reality of the risks that are in our life every day.  Whether we're flying a plane, driving a car, or even just paying the price for having had too many sunburns as a child (as in the case of my melanoma).  Life is not a guarantee, and thus we must live it to the fullest and appreciate each day we have.

We have also finally gotten a form of life insurance for John, although it is just accident insurance at this point.  Ironically, we'd been applying and getting quotes for life insurance over the past few weeks (trying to be responsible parents now that we have Evan to provide for), and were finding out how costly it is for John in a "high risk" job of being a pilot.  Last Friday's accident illustrated the risk is indeed real and while we still haven't gotten the term life policies in place, he decided accident insurance must be in place before he flew again.  While losing a loved one is already tragic, having to take on the extra financial burden would only make it that much worse.

While we've been able to turn this tragedy into a wake up call for our family, we know that two other families are still grieving and may not have a positive lesson to gain from their loss.  We will be sharing in their grief tomorrow as we attend Ryan's funeral.  It will be Evan's first funeral, not that this is a milestone I've been eager for him to have.  However, it is part of life and as much as we would like to shelter our children and loved ones from these moments, it is something we cannot ignore either.  Rather, we are reminded to be thankful for what we have been blessed with in this life, and to do our best to make each day count by doing the things that we love and spending our time with those we love.