OT - sort of - 9/11 and Peggy

GothicGremlin

Peggy had gone to Hawaii and was supposed to come back home on 9/12/2001. Instead, all air traffic was grounded. Peggy ended up staying in Hawaii until the planes were allowed to fly again.

This was a traumatizing event for her. She was always a nervous flyer, but this was it for her. She wanted no part of that flight coming home. And, I can only recall her flying once more after that. It was a work thing and she had to be helped on and off the plane because she took some heavy duty drugs (whatever the drugs are that doctors give you to get through flights) to get her through the whole airport experience.

Many years later after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she told me she wanted to go to Italy and Sicily (our family is Italian). I reminded her that the only way we could get there was to fly there. She was pretty stoic about the flight issue and said that she hoped she could see where we all came from. That was when I realized just how much she wanted to go to Italy, so I promised we'd get her there.

Looking back, she was probably later stage 4 at the time we went. She did well on the whole trip, including being on the plane. Still, it was no vacation for me and my s.o. So much stress. Hey, but at least the stress took place in pretty places.

One afternoon about mid-way through the trip, after a particularly difficult day, my s.o. and I stopped off and had a little afternoon fortification (Peggy was taking a nap & I had secured promises from the cruise ship staff to keep an eye on her. They did).

Our fortification took the form of these two blue drinks. Hey, if I'm going to drink, it's going to be a girlie drink. Those drinks were strong! I almost couldn't finish mine.

When this time of year comes around and I think about 9/11, I often remember Peggy freaking out. It's not anywhere close to what some others experienced back then, but it is something that I always think about right around this time of year.

M1

Gg today would have been my father's100th birthday. I was glad he didn't live to see 2001. What a century it's been.

SusanB-dil

Wow GG...

Yup - I think most of us know exactly where we were that day.

M1 - I'm sure much better memories with dad rather than the other.

Quilting brings calm

I remember where I was that day - at work. I also remember the planes being grounded. People stranded had to be scared. I imagine the first few days that flights resumed were no picnic. People were on edge and security was probably tight. Any flight home from Hawaii is also long and tedious ( I was in Hawaii this January). I can understand Peggy’s reluctance to fly after that.

GothicGremlin

Yep, @SusanB-dil - we do. I was almost in a Peggy situation. I had spent the 5 days before 9/11 at a conference in Anchorage, Alaska. I had never been to Alaska and was excited to be there. Things had gone so well too. I was on one panel talking about consumer privacy and on another one talking about wiretapping.

My s.o. met me there the last day. We liked Anchorage so much we almost stayed an extra day, which would have been 9/11. Good thing we didn't, and left on the 10th as planned, otherwise we probably would have ended up in Anchorage for awhile longer. As it was, my s.o. had some business in Seattle so he got off there, and I continued home to San Francisco. I was asleep when it all happened. My s.o. called me to wake me up to tell me what happened, and to make sure I had food in the house.

Because of the groundings we didn't see each other for a week. It might have been a little longer, I can't remember now. If it was longer, it was because we wanted to wait until things settled down.

Funny that Peggy and I were in kind of opposite places.