How An 80 Year-Old Woman’s Tears Righted My Spiritual Ship
I’d just returned to my seat from a pit stop to the lavatory on a flight last week from Chicago to Santa Ana, California. I buckled my seatbelt and eagerly reached for my headphones. I was excited to watch the last half hour of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a movie that got pretty awful reviews but that I found surprisingly entertaining.
Just as I raised my headphones…“Are you going home to Orange County or just visiting?” This from the older woman sitting to my left, spoken with a clear Irish lilt. Great. Just as I was about to get back into my thriller, I get this.
Now I’m a fairly gregarious, extroverted guy, but I’ve always hated airplane small talk. For me the routine has always been put bag in overhead bin, sit in seat, fasten seat belt, put on headphones, grab book, tune out world, land, leave plane.
I’d helped my seatmate earlier in the flight with raising and lowering her tray table and had gotten the feeling that she may have wanted to chat, but had successfully warded off any attempts at engagement.
I responded, “I’m headed home. How about yourself?” She said she was on her way home after visiting family in Chicago and Michigan.
We’d chatted no more than two or three minutes when the subject of her husband came up. “He died six…
