Read Flight to Heaven Online

Authors: Dale Black

Tags: #Afterlife, #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Personal Memoir, #Retail

Flight to Heaven (6 page)

BOOK: Flight to Heaven
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“The other man was pronounced dead at the scene. He died on impact.”
I closed my eye. I felt the breath leave my lungs, the very life in me escaping. That was the end of his visit, the end of my day, a dark and lonely end.
 
On another visit, on another day, my parents were with the doctor. He was going to give me my prognosis and wanted them there for support.
“When are you going to let me out of here, Doc?”
He looked at my parents, then back to me. “Dale, it looks to us at this time that you’ll be hospitalized for at least eight months. You have some pretty severe injuries. You’re going to require extensive specialized rehabilitation. And we want to keep a close eye on you for head and other internal injuries.”
Whether it was faith, youthful enthusiasm, or some genetically ingrained stubbornness, I can’t say, but I felt emboldened and blurted out: “I’ll be flying over that monument as pilot in command one year from the day of the crash!”
No one smiled. No one encouraged me. They just stared at me in silence. And then, saying their polite good-byes, they left.
Later, a copy of the
LA Times
from the day after the crash found its way onto my bed. The front-page headlines read: “PLANE CRASHES INTO AIR MEMORIAL. TWO MEN DIE, ONE CRITICAL.”
I scanned it with my good eye: “Seconds after taking off from Hollywood-Burbank Airport, a twin-engine plane crashed into a cemetery’s memorial to aviators Friday morning, killing two men and critically injuring a third. Dead were the pilot, Charles Burns, 27, of Lakewood, and copilot, Eugene Bain, 38, of Fresno. A passenger, Dale Black, 19, of Los Alamitos was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank in critical condition.”
Beside the article was a photograph of the monument we had hit. The ornate cubical structure with the dome on top was built as a memorial to fallen pioneers of aviation history. And there, at the base of that memorial, was what was left of our plane. Our Piper’s mangled wings were lying on the ground, folded one over the other.
Other newspapers found their way into my room, describing the monument and giving details of the crash. The cement and marble memorial was seventy-five feet high and fifty feet by fifty wide. The plane impacted the dome just below the top, at the seventy-foot mark. Judging by the gouge left and the damage to the aircraft, the FAA estimated the speed at impact to be 135 mph. The word used in one of the articles to describe the condition of the aircraft after the crash was
disintegrated.
On the wall above the wings of our plane was the inscription and name of the monument: PORTAL OF THE FOLDED WINGS.
 
Aerial photograph taken within hours of the crash just visible are shorn-off treas and the impact site on the Portal of the Folded Wings’ dome.
Photo taken and used with permission by Harold Morby.
 
 
A closer view of the crash, showing a fire truck, amergency persinnel, and the Piper Navajo dabris. Photo taken and used with permission by Harold Morby.
 
The plane that had been so vibrant with power, humming life, promise of adventure, was now on the ground like a featherless baby bird fallen from its nest. Frail. Broken. Irretrievably broken.
As I was sifting through the emotional wreckage, picking up the pieces, trying to make some sense of it all, trying to find some peace, two visitors came and tossed what I had gathered to the ground.
The men were pilots, employees of the company that owned the Navajo. They came, ostensibly, to check on me, to see how I was doing. I had trouble remembering them, but they clearly knew me. The conversation quickly turned to a small newspaper that had apparently blamed me for the crash. The reporter, they told me, said that since I was in the temporary seat behind the other two pilots, I was sitting next to the fuel selector valves. And since the plane had lost power after takeoff, they told me my feet probably moved against the valves, closing them, and causing the engines to lose power. The logical blame pointed to me, they said.
I was so taken aback by the accusation that I couldn’t respond. I pretended not to understand, pretended to be drowsy from the medication, and they left without my making a rebuttal. In my mind, none of it seemed logical. But my mind wasn’t working all that well. What if it was true? What if I
had
been to blame?
No one could have said anything more devastating. I could live without playing sports. I could live without walking. I could live without flying. But
this
? I couldn’t live with this.
At the time, I was living with a tremendous amount of physical pain. I could feel the gash across my eyes, feel the stitches in my eyelid, feel the pull of stitches with the slightest movement in my face. My head felt as if it were going to explode. My whole body ached. My back hurt with every breath. My left shoulder throbbed. My left ankle shot skewers of pain up my leg. And I would be that way for the next eight months? The worst was the thought that I was somehow responsible.
If God spared me, was it for this reason? To be summoned before a jury of my peers? Brought before them not to be celebrated but shamed?
 
A bystander took this photo of his son next to the mangled cockpit. Two years later Dale met the boy and was given the photo.
 
However severe the physical pain, the emotional pain was worse. Overwhelmed by both, I lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, my mind wandering in a daze amid the wreckage not only of shattered dreams but a shattered faith.
My father’s words came back to haunt me:
God clearly spared you.
From what? Death with dignity?
A war raged between my mind and heart. Had God spared me or sentenced me? Was I sentenced to life without parole, imprisoned by guilt, shame, humiliation, and accusation?
No. A merciful God had not spared me.
A merciful God would have let me die. Wouldn’t He?
 
The visit of those two pilots put me in a bad place. But it was only a place I visited; I didn’t dare stay there. In my heart, the deepest part of me, I knew that a loving God had truly spared my life.
Another part of the reason I didn’t stay there was the wonderfully cheerful hospital staff. I had become something of a celebrity and they seemed to enjoy it. They seemed to enjoy me too, which made a huge difference in my mood, which went up and down on an almost hourly basis, tracking with my pain and whatever news happened to find its way into my room.
The days that followed brought with them a revolving door of visitors. “You’re
worse
than a celebrity, Dale,” one of the nurses quipped. “Who
are
all these people, anyway?”
People I knew from high school showed up to see the miracle that survived the unsurvivable. People I knew from the college I had been kicked out of came by to see what had become of me. Lots and lots of people came. It was all a blur.
It seemed that in every conversation I would eventually hear the same words: “You’re so lucky to be alive, Dale.” I recoiled from the words. It was amazing to have survived what the FAA called a non-survivable airplane crash. But was it really luck? It couldn’t be. There was something more to this than luck. God had chosen to spare my life. I knew it was an absolute miracle. Beyond that, I didn’t know.
Through the many friends and acquaintances that stopped by, I had a virtual mirror held up to me, reflecting just how bad things were inside my brain.
One day a group from my high school came by, reminiscing about old times. They talked about one of the teachers we’d had. Everyone in the room laughed, bantering back and forth. Everyone but me, that is. I stared at them, bewildered.
Who are they talking about? And who are all the other people they speak of so casually, like I should know them?
I couldn’t even remember most of the people who were visiting. I not only forgot their names, I forgot
them
. I didn’t know who they were. They were complete strangers.
And yet to hear them laugh and carry on, you’d think we were best friends.
Are we? Could it be that I have forgotten who my friends are?
Later, others from college dropped by, and the same thing happened. After everyone left, I stared at the walls, wondering who I was. My eyes drifted to the IV tethered to my arm. The steady drip made me feel like it was happening to my brain. All the memories, all the people I knew, my friends, even my close friends, were steadily dripping out of my mind.
Will I continue to forget? Am I losing my mind?
I was aware of my surroundings. I wasn’t crazy. I was coherent. I could think. I could follow people’s conversations, engage in conversation. I just had these gaping holes in my memory.
And by
gaping,
I mean so big you could drive an 18-wheeler through it.
Visitors continued to come by. I had survived. Their prayers had been answered. And now they were there to cheer me on to recovery. I tried to concentrate. I tried to remember their faces, their names, what they meant to me. Then I stopped trying to make sense of all the remember-when stories, all the good-natured kidding, all the comments they thought would lead to conversation. But that led nowhere. I did a lot of smiling and nodding, as if I understood. A lot of grimacing too, hoping they would see the pain I was in, politely excuse themselves, and leave.
My parents sensed my frustration. “Don’t worry, Dale, you’ve had some slight head injuries. It’s probably just temporary,” they said, trying to console me. But I knew my parents always looked on the bright side.
BOOK: Flight to Heaven
7.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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