No Problem
When the plane touched down at Portland International Airport, the tires hit the runway with a scream so loud that the woman next to me grabbed her armrest.
I didn’t move.
I had stopped flinching at things three days earlier.
My name is Amelia. I’m thirty-five years old. And that morning, in a little village in northern Portugal, I buried my husband, James, in soil that didn’t belong to either of us.
I turned my phone on before the plane even reached the gate. The flight attendant gave me a look. I didn’t care.
My fingers were shaking.
Not from the cold.
From hope. Some small, stupid, desperate part of me still believed my family would be waiting.
I opened our family group chat. It was called The Brandts with a little house emoji. My mother had named it. It had my mom, my dad, my older brother Troy, his wife Kelsey, and me.
I typed:
My flight arrives at 5:00 p.m. Can someone please pick me up?
I hit send before I could change my mind.
The three typing dots appeared almost right away.
For a second, I felt something loosen in my chest. Someone was answering. Someone was coming.
Then Troy’s message popped up.
Troy: We’re overwhelmed today. Just get an Uber.
I read it once. Then again.
A few seconds later, my mother answered.
Mom: Why didn’t you plan this more carefully? You know Tuesdays are difficult for everyone.
I stared at the screen until the words went blurry.
Plan more carefully.
As if I had scheduled my husband’s brain aneurysm.
As if his death had been something I could have put on the family calendar a few weeks ahead, between Kelsey’s book club and Dad’s dentist appointment.
The plane jerked to a stop at the gate. All around me, people stood up and started pulling bags out of the overhead bins. Somebody’s elbow hit my shoulder. A man behind me was on the phone telling someone, “Yeah, babe, just landed, I’ll see you outside in ten.”
I looked down at my phone again.
I didn’t argue.
I didn’t remind them that for the past five days, I’d identified James’s body in a cold room in a foreign hospital. That I’d signed forms in a language I didn’t speak, with a translator who kept apologizing. That I’d chosen a coffin by pointing at a picture in a binder. That I’d stood alone at his grave that morning while an old priest said words I didn’t understand.
I just typed two words.