Day 40 This Morning At Stars Coffee

I went to Starbucks this morning for a little morning blast.  I noticed the lights for “buck” were unplugged and I thought it was a cute name for a coffee shop.  Stars Coffee.  Only a couple of people were in line and one was a major in the Air Force.  How do I know that?  He was wearing a flight uniform complete with the zippered pockets down by his ankle.  Uniforms these days use Velcro for patches.  I don’t know, I like the old school look better.  Maybe more moms or wives liked sewing patches back in the 60’s than they do now.  I was darning socks the other night, I think I might be in the minority of men that still do that today too.

“Are you a pilot?” I ventured.

“Yes” he said with a kind smile.  He looked so young and handsome.  My dad must have looked the same in his day.

“Yeah my dad was a pilot as well in the Air Force.  He flew a KC-135, well, that was his favorite plane to fly.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve been on the back end of getting fueled by those, very cool stuff.” He fully engaged me being the polite officer that I remember so well as a kid.  We chatted for a minute more and he had to go.  I almost said “Be Safe”, but for some reason I didn’t want to jinx him.  The conversation brought me back to the Jurassic era when I was in 8^th grade talking to Captain Kelley one morning. 

He was my dad’s best friend.  My parents were in Spain that week on vacation and we were being monitored by the Marshall’s upstairs in our housing unit.  I was walking to school through housing and came upon the Kelley’s in their Mercedes.  Captain Kelley, in his flight suit, was grunting as he was pushing the behemoth from behind.

“Chris!  What a surprise.  C’mon buddy give me a hand getting Mrs. Kelley out of here.” Big smiling, happy Captain Kelley.  How could I refuse?  I wouldn’t have anyway, he was a good guy.  So I dropped my books and got behind the car and started pushing with all of my little mighty might.  I wanted to help him that much.  After an eternity of oomph the car spit out a cloud of exhaust and starting chugging its way to freedom.  I, being the pusher standing over the exhaust pipe took the full load of carbon monoxide into my lungs.  Spinning like crazy I started to drop like a top to the ground.  Captain Kelley grabbed me before I hit and snapped me up straight as a pencil. 

“Chris, Chris.  You all right buddy.  Heh heh, looks like you took on too much stuff there.  C’mon shake it off.  Thanks so much.  I couldn’t have done it without you!  Now off to school and I’ll see you later!”  He was so kind and so cool.  He dusted me on the head and gave me a little shoulder bump with his fist smiling the whole time.  He jumped in his car, waved and drove off.  I felt accomplished, a rare thing at that sensitive age for me.  I hopped all the way to class reliving the smile on his face and Mrs. Kelley’s face as she drove off successfully.  I did it!  I was a good boy today!

A little later in class we heard the loudest sonic boom I'd ever heard.  As a child of the military, sonic booms were frequent and I thought they were super cool.  This one was so loud and close it shook all the windows of the classroom.   Most of us were startled and jumped in our seats.  Then a nervous titter and then back to normal.  But everything was not normal.  Not from that moment on.  At recess I noticed the cluster of people standing around in front of their housing units in little circles talking to each other.  Not the usual walking by and saying hello to neighbor’s clusters, but little Indian pow-wow groups.  Whispers were gathering in the wind and slowly little rumors were making it to the classrooms.   That was not a sonic boom that was a plane blowing up on base.  DAD!  No, whew, on vacation.  It wasn’t a feeling I was accustomed too.  I wondered who it could be.  It was such a small community, one way or the other, either I knew them or definitely my dad would know them.  I hoped no one was hurt.  This was my first experience living on base so close to such action and everything was new.  A plane blowing up was definitely new and not something I had thought I would ever have to think about.  I wasn’t equipped at that age to know the dangers of such frightening magnitudes.  My dad got in a jet every day, took off, flew around for a while and then landed and came home.  That was it.  I experienced a new danger that day.  A new anxiety was born and added to what would become a rather complicated large unfocused mix.

 

Captain Kelley was the pilot.  He was dead.  He died on impact as well as the co-pilot.  Of the 3 on the plane, Major Fucich was the only survivor and he was not in good condition.  Thankfully he did have a complete recovery.  But Captain Kelley was dead.  Dead.  As in no more big smiling Captain Kelley for me to see anymore.  No more dad for his son Steve to see.  No more best friend of my dad to see.  Ever again.  Dead.  I couldn’t believe it.  There was no program in my brain that had ever dealt with death and I didn’t know how to react.  I couldn’t comprehend the vastness or the complete lack of sight of this man again.  The void that was created in my world by his departure.  It didn’t make sense and I didn’t know what to do.  I tried to force tears because I thought that was the appropriate manner that I’d seen on TV.  He was dead.

My parents were called and they came home immediately.  Mrs. Kelley said she wouldn’t leave until she saw my mom.  Of course my dad had to come see his friend.  I saw my dad briefly and he was in tears and that, my people, was a rare sight.  That was another component of a feeling that I added to my growing data base of grief.  My dad lost a friend and he was crying.  I still didn’t have the feeling right myself.  It was a week of grief and desperate feelings.  I saw Mrs. Kelley a lot at my house and of course, Steve was my friend and I saw him too.  He had the same or worse condition that I did.  In hindsight, I’d say he was in shock as I never saw any tears fall from his face.  He even talked about walking the crash scene and finding his dad’s captain bars.  I didn’t believe him but I kept that knowledge to myself.  I learned enough to not say anything hurtful or contradictory.  I was listening in when my mom was comforting Mrs. Kelley and heard a lot of platitudes coming out of her mouth.

My dad never talked to me about his feelings and I learned something more.  Keep feelings to yourself.  I wanted to cry out, scream, and yell at the top of my lungs, “I’ll never see Captain Kelley again!”  But from the actions I witnessed I kept all of that to myself.  I think I wanted to cry more that I didn’t know how to feel than I did about Captain Kelley dying.  I remember walking the dog in the back of the building and putting my hands on the cyclone fence separating our base from German soil.  I looked out into the forest and tried to force tears.  He was killed on the other side of this fence about a mile away and I tried to think of the horror he felt in that last second when he realized what was about to happen.  About that fact that he will never see his kids grow up, that he’ll never raise another beer with my dad.  That he spent a year in Viet Nam and had not a scratch but ended up getting killed over some mechanical dysfunction in a quiet little shit town like Spangdahlem.  I thought about how he grabbed me before I hit the ground and was so positive and friendly to me.  I thought that I might have been the last civilian he talked to before he died.  I tried thinking so hard and tears started rushing down my face.  There was no sense of grief, more a sense of frustration, of anger that I didn’t know how to feel.  I would miss him for sure but that was an action for the future that I didn’t have the framework to understand.  I realized it was horrible because of all the drama and intense emotions I listened to, watched closely and distantly.  I just couldn’t get it right.  I realize that as a 13 year old, it wasn’t intended to be an emotion that I would be familiar with and that I had no one to talk to about it.  But I tell you that it was an experience that is etched distinctly in my mind as AN IMPORTANT EVENT. 

I wish my dad could have sat me down and talked to me directly about what happened and how it made him feel.  It would have given him that human element that I sorely lacked in the vision of my parents.  He was a young man too that day and I’m sure he aged greatly with his loss.  So I didn’t say, “Have a safe day” today to that young man in Star’s Coffee but I hope he does and that he gets to land safely and come home to his family of young kids everyday.

 

1.  I'm grateful that I am digging up this stuff and seeing it in a new light.

2.  I'm grateful that my dad stayed safe and alive for his tenure in the AF.

3.  I'm grateful for my mental illness that fosters diligence into learning how and why my mind works the way it does.