After Tragedy, Walk Carefully Toward Recovery

The local community, and Western Nebraska Community College’s Sidney aviation program specifically, was struck hard recently. Make no mistake. This will be a difficult journey.

The aviation program is a tight-knit crew of students fascinated with the many skills associated with flight. Visiting one of their fly-in breakfasts for pilots, I felt like I was invited to a community gathering, something almost family-like.

Even those who bordered on “dysfunctional” put fun in the word. They were students under a common curriculum, but they are also close-knit. They were under the kind of bond that if one got hurt, others might throw some jabs, but they also felt it.

That is what made the April 1 incident so much more painful. This isn’t a headline from the other side of the nation, or a cable channel story.

This is real. This involves people directly and indirectly we see downtown at the cafes, at the grocery stores, walking in the park. Some are here long enough to earn their education degrees, and some have a long history in the region.

Regardless of their heritage, they are people who have family, friends, loved ones who are suddenly at a loss. The story they were writing has suddenly changed. Metaphorically, the pen was snatched from them and the book left for someone else to finish.

Finding your way out of loss and tragedy is not easy. It is not always pretty or comfortable. It takes support of friends, family, and counselors. Counseling doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re in a place you need a map, a guide, to find your way out of.

“Counseling” can be as simple as spending time with your closest friend or friends. It is also setting aside time to meet with a person who is trained in guiding a person through his or her dark time in life.

Part of the key is to not expect to come through a tragedy the same way you entered, and to not expect to go through it alone. It will change you. The struggle is to change for the better.

I don’t offer these thoughts as random musings or shallow platitudes. Nor is my insight professional. It is personal.

I will always remember the midnight phone call — literally, the trip to the hospital to hear the news, and the raw emotions that follow.

The details that go with letting go can be overwhelming. It was the beginning of a journey that improves, but never fully goes away. There are memories that resurface; mostly good with the tear of remembering those who no longer walk with us. After a time the smiles come back with the bittersweet memories of those lost. It is a journey.

The easiest and sometimes costliest mistake is to believe revcovering from loss is an overnight decision. Reaching in the closet for a mask-of-the-day is convenience at the cost of inner peace. Grief doesn’t pass in a moment, and moving past it doesn’t happen by faking it till you make it. Have someone you can be real with, your own defined safe space to share memories.

Be strong enough to seek normalcy, while admitting life will have a tinge of new normal. Reach for the daylight, physically and emotionally. Those among the class, and those who know the class, support each other through the process.

Blame should not be part of the journey. Blame makes recovery harder, especially blaming yourself. Along the way, learn to value each day, each moment, and those close to you.

Each sunrise is a gift. Each coffee or lunch with a friend is a memory.