A little brush with mortality...

This past Saturday, my husband had a 50-50 chance of survival. No joke. And I was completely oblivious.

Here's the deal:

He flew down Friday to Lexington, KY to help his sister get settled in her new digs there, with plans to fly back Saturday night. I was okay with this, although not thoroughly thrilled--I am NOT a fan of spending nights alone, mainly because I'm ridiculously afraid of the dark for a thirtysomething mother. But it was cool. I had Monk and Psychic to get me through the darker hours before bedtime, and a new mystery novel. Of course, Max chooses this particular weekend to come down with a mysterious virus complete with fever and vomiting and staying awake all night, but that, I've learned, is part of the Murphy's Law of mothering--the worst events with your children will occur when you are sans spouse.

So Friday night passes in a haze of USA Network programming, whodunits and vomit cleaning. I survived.

Then Moon, my spousal unit, calls me Saturday evening around the time he should be boarding his plane and tells me that due to a plane malfunction his flight has been canceled and he has to reschedule for the next morning. He was offered a choice of the 6:00 or 9:00 flight back. He chose 9:00AM.

I was not a happy camper, as I now faced another night alone with a sick baby and a raging case of cabin fever from having been locked in the house all day with said sick baby. But this is life, and I must deal. Sunday it is.

"I'll see you around 12:30 or so," he tells me.

Max and I spent another sleepless night, broken only by a 2-hour respite he offered me while he slept through my watching of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle on cable TV. (yeah, yeah, yeah, make fun if you wish, but sleep deprivation and intellectually stimulating movies do not mix.) I am REALLY looking forward to Moon's homecoming, if only for the chance of sleep it might provide.

At 7:00AM Sunday morning, he calls me again.

"Hey," he says, "are you watching the news?"

"No, I'm watching Dora the Explorer with Max while brain cells trickle out of my ears," I tell him. I am running on about 2 hours sleep total, and my hugely pregnant state does not allow me to consume massive amounts of caffeine to compensate. As a result, I am not in the best of moods.

"Well, I won't make my flight. There's been a crash and the airport's closed."

"WHAT???" I said, stupidly.

"That's all I know," he said. "Except that I think the plane that crashed was the plane I was supposed to be on at 9:00."

The impact of all this didn't hit until around 9:30, when the news networks picked up the story and every major Atlanta channel was carrying the story of Comair Flight 5191. My knees went rubbery as I sat there watching the whole story unfold--the crash itself, the fact that all but one person on the flight died. One of the passengers was a dad who had been visiting family in Lexington and took the earlier flight because he wanted to see his kids. Moon came within a hair's breadth of being on that plane. "Do you want the 6:00 or the 9:00 flight?" he'd been asked, and had a 50-50 chance of living or dying in the answer he gave.

When he finally got home around 7PM that night, I was never so glad to see him.

It's funny how quickly our life settled back into the grooves of, well, life--you think that when you brush against death's veil that closely you would take some time to ponder the whole profundity of the thing. But by now Max was recovering from his virus, and had his own case of severe cabin fever that he exhibited by screaming at the top of his lungs and running around the house in circles like a rabid dog. One of our cats had been bitten by a spider the night before and had to be taken to the kitty ER because the allergic response to the spider bite was causing it to try and scratch its face off, and he was getting blood all over my carpet. One of us had to take dinner over to a sick family member. We were out of diapers. That sort of thing. Life just shoved itself into the cracks too quickly to allow us to ponder the cracks in the first place.

I thanked God, of course, but it was a weird sort of thank you. How do you say thanks for the preservation of one life in the midst of the loss of 49 others? "Thanks that such a horrible thing didn't happen to us" seems a selfish sort of prayer. I'm profoundly grateful my husband will get to see the face of his unborn child, which he almost didn't. But what of the newlywed couple just starting a brand new life who were on that plane?

So, I'm grateful and sad and relieved all at the same time. Death seems to have been dogging our family for a few years now with the loss of both of my grandparents and Moon's dad, so it's nice to see us get bypassed this time, even if I'm still reeling a bit from the way the Grim Reaper's black robes brushed a little too closely against my husband's ankles. And as in-your-face a reminder as it was, it was still a reminder that after 11 years, I am still crazy about my husband, and have no idea how to even contemplate a full life without him.

So here we are on Tuesday, all of us still alive, Max fully recovered, cat in one of those awful conehead things and healing, Moon back at work, me blogging, fetus kicking the snot out of me, diapers bought, life moving on. Our biggest concern today is who we can get to babysit Max this Thursday while we go to an Earth, Wind and Fire concert (not my first choice, but the tix are free and Moon is a huge 70s music fan. I would have preferred the recent John Prine/Patty Griffin show, but that is neither here nor there). But somewhere out there are 49 families whose lives have been totally blown apart, and my heart and prayers are still with them, because I came this close to joining their ranks. If you get a chance today, you might want to offer up a prayer/good thought as well. The Valley of the Shadow of Death is a pretty horrible place to be.