First Flight Without Uzma

As we settled into our seats on the plane, Gauri said, “Our family is sitting together for the first time.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean Mama is not with us. So no one has to sit on the seat there.” She pointed sadly across the aisle.

We were in a plane with 3 seats on each side of the aisle, heading to Boston to visit a friend. It was a trip that Uzma and I had really wanted to make last summer, but never could make it work because of cancer.

Sometimes I felt guilty saying we couldn’t visit someone because of cancer. It’s not like we didn’t travel at all during Uzma’s last year. We took a trip during the kids’ spring break. We also went to Niagara Falls on the fifth anniversary of Uzma being diagnosed with cancer.

Originally, Uzma had planned to celebrate that milestone in New York City with a couple of breast cancer survivor friends. By the time the day drew near, she knew she wasn’t really feeling well enough to coordinate anything with friends. Less than a month before the Niagara trip we had found out that yet another treatment regimen had failed her. We ended up planning that break for the falls just 3-4 days before.

This is what I remind myself when I feel guilty about not visiting people who mean a lot to us in the last few years. Cancer, it’s treatment, and side-effects of treatments kept us from making any plans with friends and relatives. It felt easier to make last minute plans by ourselves.

When traveling on a plane with 3 seats on each side of the aisle, we had seen families of four split up a couple of different ways. Either they would sit two by two, usually in back to back rows. Or they would split up across the aisle. We preferred to sit in the same row. That meant one of us — Uzma or me — sat across the aisle from the rest of the family.

Now that it is just the three of us, our amputated family sits together. How will we manage traveling on a plane with only 2 seats on each side of the aisle? Will there be an argument about who gets to sit with whom? Deciding not to worry about that now, I started thinking about life without Uzma.

This was the first trip ever without Uzma. You could tell. I thought I had managed to get us all packed and ready on time. As we settled in on the plane, it dawned on me that I hadn’t taken anything to keep the kids busy. Uzma always used to make sure they had enough activities to stay occupied — books to read, books to color, sheaves of loose paper, pencils, coloring pens, and pastels. You name it, she would pack it. There was no chance of boredom. I had packed nothing. Zilch.

Fortunately, the plane had a screen for each seat. It had a decent selection of kids movies to choose from. That made the 2-hour flight really fly.

Not really though.

There was a stranger across the aisle.