In November of 2004, my husband, Isaac and I went on vacation to Maui with my Dad and his wife Lynne. While we were there, Lynne drowned in the Pacific Ocean. This experience was, of course, devastating. In the days that followed I felt, quite literally, as if I was trapped on vacation.
Dad decided to stay until his scheduled flight three days later. Despite our desire to flee, we stayed with him for the purpose of solidarity. We visited a funeral parlor to choose a coffin and make arrangements for Lynne’s body to be sent back to the Southern Utah town where she and my father had lived. We met with investigators to talk about the results of the autopsy.
All the while, we were surrounded by shiny, happy, vacation people who were “having a wonderful time” and “didn’t have a care in the world.” At last, the day of our return flight arrived and we packed our bags and went to the airport. I started to cry as I waited in line. Leaving without her made the nightmare real.
I guess my behavior seemed suspicious. I was selected for a thorough search at security. The supervisor narrowed his eyes as he watched me, still crying, and as the first inspector finished her search, he demanded that I be searched again. Maybe terrorists cry before they blow up planes.
The second woman stopped just short of a strip search, asking me to open the fly on my pants and pull up my shirt and pant-legs. I complied, but by now I was getting irritated enough to be angry and thankfully, my tears stopped. I had to wonder – hadn’t someone told them what had happened to our missing passenger?
Finally I was permitted to retrieve my carry-on from the x-ray area and proceed to my gate. Isaac and I waited in the bar and soothed our frazzled nerves with bourbon. An hour later, we gratefully boarded the plane that took us away from Hawaii.
In Las Vegas we had to change airlines for our flight back home to Seattle. We escorted my Dad to the baggage claim and tearfully turned him over to his best friend, Greg. We would be returning in a couple of days for the funeral, but nonetheless, this felt like a big goodbye.
Going through the line at security, we were delayed as they ran my carry-on bag through the scanner several times – a bag that had already been examined in Maui.
The attendant, a young woman, called an older man over to examine the screen with her. They both frowned as they looked intently at the images. “What now?” I murmured to Isaac.
The man picked up my bag and walked toward us. “Is this yours?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He placed the bag on a table. “There appears to be a knife in it.”
“No,” I said laughing, “There’s no…ooh!” All of a sudden, I remembered that I did indeed have a knife in my bag. It was a paring knife that my dad had brought to our hotel room one night for cutting up pineapple. When packing my things, I had come across the knife, wrapped it in a bandanna and put it in my purse, with the plan to give it back to my dad. Somehow it had slipped my mind. “Right,” I said. “There is a knife. It was a mistake.” There wasn’t much more to say. Again, I wished he could just understand my state of mind, but it seemed too outrageous to even try to explain.
The security people in Vegas seemed far more relaxed than those in Maui. After a little lecture about how knives weren’t allowed on airplanes, they calmly gave me my options: carry the knife back to the baggage check-in and check it, put it in an envelope and send it to myself, or just surrender it to the authorities. I gladly released ownership of the knife and Isaac and I escaped to the bar for a couple of humongous beers.
Neither of us had much to say. We felt drained and defeated and we just sat, staring into our glasses and wishing for a reprieve. We wanted to get home and see our children. We needed people around us who had some understanding of what had happened. It was so painful to be surrounded by these busy and distracted people. I felt abused by their lack of sensitivity.
When we got home, later that day, we were met by the family and friends who loved us. Their compassion was like a soothing balm, giving us the fortitude to do what was necessary. Impossible as it seemed, a day later, we packed up the kids and the car to drive to Utah for a Thanksgiving funeral.