Challenger and Release
Jan. 28th, 2006 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplerabbitJanuary 28, 1986
I was twenty-three and working in an office in San Francisco. It was during a dark time in my life when I didn’t know where I was going or what to do. I had left my job at Locus Magazine and was living alone in a basement studio apartment in Oakland. I felt frightened, set adrift.
Alone, lost and directionless.
My co-workers and I were listening to the radio when the Challenger launched – and exploded. Shocked gasps and silence as all work came to a stop. We listened in horror. We cried.
And then I picked up the phone. My mom had always been very enthusiastic about the space program and I knew she would be upset. She worked as a clerical supervisor for the University of Oklahoma’s Nursing College. I called to tell her the news.
And found my world rocked by yet another, more personal, explosion.
Mom’s office told me she was on her way to Purcell, to the Veteran’s Hospital. My dad was very ill.
My dad. My dad had died on May 31, 1975. His body had persisted on for nearly eleven years, languishing in locked wards of various hospitals. A semi-vegetative state, they call it. A zombie, I call it. The body of a man long dead. We had been held prisoner by this thing. Waiting.
The hit-and-run accident had left him in a coma – for twenty days. Then he had woken. Well something woke – something that was part John Atkins and part monster. The brain damage had been too severe. Zombie movies are not fiction to me.
I use to dream he woke up and came home. Every year on the anniversary of the accident, I had the same reoccurring dream. He woke up and found himself whole, unchanged beside the road. Each year, the world had changed a bit more. He would walk the way from that once lonely spot in the country past new developments until he reached our family home. There he would find us – changed beyond recognition – his children grown, his wife grown older. His world had profoundly changed. He would hold us and we would all cry. Cry that he was finally home. Together, with him, we would grieve all the days and years he had missed. We would catch up with him. Tell him all the pain we had endured. Tell him our accomplishments and our failures. Tell him how much we needed him. Tell him how much we loved him. He would recognize us and tell us how much he loved us.
The Challenger had exploded. I stood holding the phone staring out a window of a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco. The sky was gray and the rain pelted the windows. There was crying in the room behind me as I dialed for information and then the hospital. I asked for the doctor in charge of my dad.
The man told me that “John” had pneumonia and was very ill. Then I said that he should understand that John had been a semi-vegetable for eleven years. I told the doctor that living like this was our dad’s worst nightmare. “Forgive me doctor, but I have to say, I think it would be a great kindness if nature was finally allowed to take its course this time.” He said he agreed. I was told later that when my mom got there, she said nearly the same thing. That the doctor was relieved that we all agreed on this.
I sat by the phone through the night, and finally the call came. John Douglas Atkins had died of pneumonia. I was on a plane to Oklahoma that morning. He was dead. His body was finally dead. I cannot begin to tell you the intensity of joy we felt. We frightened people around us. We kept laughing and smiling. How can we possibly be so happy that our dad was dead? They didn’t understand.
The funeral home invited us to view the body. No one came to do so. We had seen the body. It had shuffled and drooled and ate and pissed and horrified us for too long. Now we could forget that thing and remember our dad. When Angela and I went to collect the box with his ashes, we tossed it back and forth between us, marveling at how small it was. We got the giggles and were asked to leave by a very disapproving funeral home employee.
The memorial, held in the church where he had been a Deacon, was wonderful. Photos and stories. Memories and smiles. Oh, we cried. We mourned the years lost. We mourned the pain he had suffered. We cried tears of happiness that he and we were finally free.
We sat in our living room telling stories – every story we could remember about him. We girls had been 13, 11, 9 and 4 years old when he died. Now, as young women, we remembered him. The youngest learned again who he was.
That year changed everything. When I got back to California, I was met by a friend who was going to Santa Cruz for the day. I had never been. I felt at home. I felt called, directed, to be there. I applied to UCSC. That summer I moved to Santa Cruz, began attending UCSC and met a young man named Troy. When I invited mom to live in California, I could feel dad’s approval.
On May 31st, 1986, I did not have the reoccurring dream. I was living the dream. I could feel my dad’s presence in everything I did. He watched and marveled at our lives.
All I remember of the Challenger is the explosion. Swept back in time by my own personal transformations, I paid no attention to the news following the explosion. I was saddened by the event but had no connection to the rest of the country in the days that followed.
I am told a miracle happened that night. When my sisters arrived at the hospital to say good bye to dad, he woke up and told them he loved them. I weep now at the idea of it. This man had not recognized any of us in over a decade. Yet, like my dream, he woke and knew his children. He died knowing we loved him still.
I was twenty-three and working in an office in San Francisco. It was during a dark time in my life when I didn’t know where I was going or what to do. I had left my job at Locus Magazine and was living alone in a basement studio apartment in Oakland. I felt frightened, set adrift.
Alone, lost and directionless.
My co-workers and I were listening to the radio when the Challenger launched – and exploded. Shocked gasps and silence as all work came to a stop. We listened in horror. We cried.
And then I picked up the phone. My mom had always been very enthusiastic about the space program and I knew she would be upset. She worked as a clerical supervisor for the University of Oklahoma’s Nursing College. I called to tell her the news.
And found my world rocked by yet another, more personal, explosion.
Mom’s office told me she was on her way to Purcell, to the Veteran’s Hospital. My dad was very ill.
My dad. My dad had died on May 31, 1975. His body had persisted on for nearly eleven years, languishing in locked wards of various hospitals. A semi-vegetative state, they call it. A zombie, I call it. The body of a man long dead. We had been held prisoner by this thing. Waiting.
The hit-and-run accident had left him in a coma – for twenty days. Then he had woken. Well something woke – something that was part John Atkins and part monster. The brain damage had been too severe. Zombie movies are not fiction to me.
I use to dream he woke up and came home. Every year on the anniversary of the accident, I had the same reoccurring dream. He woke up and found himself whole, unchanged beside the road. Each year, the world had changed a bit more. He would walk the way from that once lonely spot in the country past new developments until he reached our family home. There he would find us – changed beyond recognition – his children grown, his wife grown older. His world had profoundly changed. He would hold us and we would all cry. Cry that he was finally home. Together, with him, we would grieve all the days and years he had missed. We would catch up with him. Tell him all the pain we had endured. Tell him our accomplishments and our failures. Tell him how much we needed him. Tell him how much we loved him. He would recognize us and tell us how much he loved us.
The Challenger had exploded. I stood holding the phone staring out a window of a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco. The sky was gray and the rain pelted the windows. There was crying in the room behind me as I dialed for information and then the hospital. I asked for the doctor in charge of my dad.
The man told me that “John” had pneumonia and was very ill. Then I said that he should understand that John had been a semi-vegetable for eleven years. I told the doctor that living like this was our dad’s worst nightmare. “Forgive me doctor, but I have to say, I think it would be a great kindness if nature was finally allowed to take its course this time.” He said he agreed. I was told later that when my mom got there, she said nearly the same thing. That the doctor was relieved that we all agreed on this.
I sat by the phone through the night, and finally the call came. John Douglas Atkins had died of pneumonia. I was on a plane to Oklahoma that morning. He was dead. His body was finally dead. I cannot begin to tell you the intensity of joy we felt. We frightened people around us. We kept laughing and smiling. How can we possibly be so happy that our dad was dead? They didn’t understand.
The funeral home invited us to view the body. No one came to do so. We had seen the body. It had shuffled and drooled and ate and pissed and horrified us for too long. Now we could forget that thing and remember our dad. When Angela and I went to collect the box with his ashes, we tossed it back and forth between us, marveling at how small it was. We got the giggles and were asked to leave by a very disapproving funeral home employee.
The memorial, held in the church where he had been a Deacon, was wonderful. Photos and stories. Memories and smiles. Oh, we cried. We mourned the years lost. We mourned the pain he had suffered. We cried tears of happiness that he and we were finally free.
We sat in our living room telling stories – every story we could remember about him. We girls had been 13, 11, 9 and 4 years old when he died. Now, as young women, we remembered him. The youngest learned again who he was.
That year changed everything. When I got back to California, I was met by a friend who was going to Santa Cruz for the day. I had never been. I felt at home. I felt called, directed, to be there. I applied to UCSC. That summer I moved to Santa Cruz, began attending UCSC and met a young man named Troy. When I invited mom to live in California, I could feel dad’s approval.
On May 31st, 1986, I did not have the reoccurring dream. I was living the dream. I could feel my dad’s presence in everything I did. He watched and marveled at our lives.
All I remember of the Challenger is the explosion. Swept back in time by my own personal transformations, I paid no attention to the news following the explosion. I was saddened by the event but had no connection to the rest of the country in the days that followed.
I am told a miracle happened that night. When my sisters arrived at the hospital to say good bye to dad, he woke up and told them he loved them. I weep now at the idea of it. This man had not recognized any of us in over a decade. Yet, like my dream, he woke and knew his children. He died knowing we loved him still.
