Unglücksmaschine: The Germanwings Tragedy

The terrible loss of an airplane en route from Barcelona to Düsseldorf on March 24th had no immediate explanation. First reports simply stated the plane had crashed in the French Alps. There were two babies on board and a group of tenth graders, among 150 people. Why a pilot with 6,000 flight hours, a freshly inspected plane, and a clear weather day would crash land in the mountains defied quick theorizing. Only after the remote site was reached and the cockpit recorder retrieved did a chain of evidence yield a conclusion that has distressed us all: the copilot had locked himself in the cockpit and set the plane for direct descent into a rocky canyon. The pilot died pounding on the door to be let back past the anti-terrorist lock system. Oh, miserable fate.

I first learned of the crash listening to NPR's All Things Considered in Ohio. I was in my childhood bedroom, sorting out the last of my old belongings to help downsize my parents' household. The news felt "close to home"--we flew Germany to Spain for vacation last summer. I had flown the previous day myself, Frankfurt to Detroit. More troubling, I awaited my daughter and husband three days later, also coming Frankfurt to Detroit. At the very least, a recent crash makes us uneasy to fly, even if we're reminded of the normal safety statistics, even if we try to realize the isolated nature of one event.

Away from German media, I still felt the disabling blow to the nation. What a sad loss! Miriam kept me up to date on the news flowing through her class message boards. She is in 9th grade and can readily identify with the traveling 10th graders. My heart hangs on the opera singer with the baby. Miriam was the one who first told me the news that the co-pilot had wittingly caused the crash. One German word for "intentional" is mutwillig. Mut means "courage" and willig means "willing." An awful courage underlies such an exercise of intention.

Like so many others, I followed the flow of reporting in the New York Times coverage of the crash. Interestingly, we heard a convocation address by New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet while visiting in Oberlin. He spoke of the Times' quick reporting of the story and the enormous number of readers coming to the Times website.

„Kölner Dom nachts 2013“ von Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de
Eigenes Werk. Lizenziert unter CC BY-SA 3.0 de
über Wikimedia Commons.

Now, three and a half weeks later, my family has completed our own plane travel and returned safely home to our lives in Flein. Gratefully. Today mourners gathered in the Cologne Cathedral for an ecumenical worship service followed by a state ceremony to commemorate the tragedy. If you have ever taken the train into Cologne, you've seen this building. As the archbishop reminded us, people have been gathering on that spot for 1,600 years. A protestant pastor, Annette Kurschus (with the title Präses, which I can't yet translate), spoke well and used a soothing phrase: God, let my tears fall into your cup.

An opera singer colleague of the two singers killed in the crash was brave enough to perform the Pie Jesu from Fauré's requiem. A collective choir, including many singers who appeared to be the age of the students who died, sang and sometimes shed tears.

During the state ceremony, of the many tender addresses, the words of Germany's president Joachim Gauck made the strongest impression on me. In contrast to the religious focus on eternal life and comfort in God, Gauck's speech took on the troubling role of the co-pilot. The link provides a written summary (in German) of his words, in which he talked about the wound to our sense of trust and the importance of healthy trust to enable our society to live.

With the extensive media coverage, I doubt many are searching for more material. Still, while livestreaming the ceremonies on ARD, I noticed two items to recommend, both in German. One is a brief summary video of today's events at the Cologne Cathedral. The other is a half-hour documentary about the lasting results of the tragedy, from grief to solidarity to airline safety. One commentator uses the fitting term of Unglücksmaschine, which means both "unlucky machine" and "machine of accident/mishap." A voice of experience comes from a mother who lost her child in the Winnenden school shooting in 2009. She speaks eloquently of her journey in grief. Now a new group of friends and family from 18 countries face the vertigo of incompression and the searing ache of absence. As the documentary reminds us, others already tread the same path. Perhaps we can help each other.

I won! And another excerpt

NaNoWriMo ends officially on Saturday, but when I validated my word count this afternoon, I passed the 50,000 mark and became a winner. Here's the story in a graphic:

NaNoWriMo winning results on November 28, 2013

The accomplishment feels really, really good. A daily writing mandate can carry you through times when you aren't clearly motivated to write. You just sit down and write the next thing.

As the graph shows, I had short days (when I was teaching) when I added 500 words or so. That's where the curve flattens out. The sharper rise is on the days when I did not have to teach, and I used those days to catch up (2,500+). According to my own altered schedule, I was actually "ahead" the whole time, although it only felt that way when I reached the grey average line last weekend.

I set out to write the story of being the mother of a child who died of cancer. During NaNoWriMo I drafted seven chapters. I am working chronologically and with the expectation of cutting lots of what I wrote and finding ways to make it non-chronological in the end. Where did I end up? I reached Christmas of 2001, when Simon's diagnosis was confirmed. I have a long way to go. The story grew heavier to write in the last few days--no wonder.

Here's an excerpt from chapter seven. Maybe it will never be part of a book, but I bet Ann Arborites (and others) will enjoy it anyway.

Without overtly trying, Markus and I have managed to live together in the USA only in cities that make top-ten lists for livability. In the late 1980s, not long after we became a couple in 1987, Markus had an internship to Madison, Wisconsin. I followed him there and stayed for a year of graduate school (in textiles). The gorgeous lakes Mendota and Menona, the bikable city, the cultural offerings, and Chicago only two hours’ drive away. We followed that up with Portland, Oregon for two years. Markus got his MBA at Portland State, and I studied textiles at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts and worked out of a studio in the not-yet-gentrified industrial north side. Glittering tall buildings with green and pink glass reflecting Mt. Hood when the cloud cover cleared, the Rose Garden, the Japanese Garden (where we became engaged), the Pacific coast a 90-minutes’ drive, the early days of Starbuck’s and brewpubs.

1992-1995 took us back to Germany, and we lived in the city of Karlsruhe for three years. Bikable, unusual in its classical city structure fanning out from the palace at its center, plenty of culture, the French border and Alsace-Lorraine a mere 30-minutes’ drive. Markus set his sights on a PhD program, and that search landed us in Ann Arbor. Eight years later, in 2003, his first job as a professor took us to our fourth “most livable” place in the USA: Salt Lake City, Utah. But that’s getting ahead of the time in Ann Arbor.

One of the highest quality-of-life aspects of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has to be Zingerman’s Delicatessen. Its Detroit Street deli in an old red-brick shop with outdoor seating and a spill-over building next door attracts a sandwich line that often stretches out to the sidewalk. Outrageously delicious deli meats and cheeses, olives, oils and vinegars entice shoppers to consider outrageous prices. We came most often for the bread. Zingerman’s has its own bakery, providing bread to meet (and sometimes surpass) our German standards, even at $4 a loaf. The family favorite was Farm Bread, which had a crack down the length of the oblong loaf. Simon said the bread, when sliced, looked just like a rabbit. It had a chewy crust that flaked on a fresh loaf, the inside just a little more putty-colored than white. Another favorite, more for the grown-ups, was Cherry Chocolate Bread, a tiny round loaf of dark brown bread filled with rectangular bars of a fancy sort of chocolate and soft cherries.

Zingerman’s breads became available at several supermarkets in addition to their deli, but the best place to go was the Bakehouse itself. Hidden in the winding drives of a warehouse park just past the highway that runs near the mall south of town, the Bakehouse is a room full of ovens, mixing vats, boards, and bakers with flour on their hands. You can watch it through a glass window from the salesroom. There’s a stool for kids to stand on. My first visit, I had to drive in circles around the mostly unmarked buildings until I spotted a truck with the Zingerman’s logo parked at the back. Soon, I learned to find the place as a stop on my way home from church Sunday mornings. Pastries, soups, dairy products, salty snacks, focaccia. But what we really came for was the wall filled with round and cracked and flour-topped loaves of bread.

On the Death of Children

I have a child who died at the age of seven. Since Friday I am hearing too often in the news about twenty first graders, aged six to seven, eradicated in a moment's shooting at their school. It's news that hits all of us hard; I can't for sure say if it hits me even harder.

Simon Craig Vodosek
1997-2004

School meant so much to my son, Simon. He loved recess more than anything. He barely ate his lunch because he didn't want to miss a minute of playground time. When I picked him up after school, he'd be sitting on the school's front lawn, eating his sandwich.

He also loved his first-grade classroom: being with other children and doing all the different activities and tasks, like the morning poetry page to read and circle the rhymes, illustrate with a picture. I think his first-grade classroom was the place he came closest to forgetting he had cancer and to feeling he belonged, just like every other kid. He was truly jealous of his friend Thomas' perfect attendance on 180 out of 180 school days. Simon managed 120. He would have loved making it to second grade.

School was sacred. It was his sanctuary.

How can we imagine school as a place of threat and slaughter?

I feel deeply for the families robbed of their children in Connecticut. As deeply as my own colossal pain leaves room for me to feel. I'm pretty crippled. It is hard to be an "orphaned" parent or sibling or grandparent or cousin or aunt or uncle. In Simon's case, death gave us the courtesy of forewarning. The shock of sudden loss is one I don't know first hand, nor the anguish of knowing evil was deliberately inflicted by human hands.

We did everything we could to keep Simon from losing his life, but his cancer was a threat over which human effort had no power. I have no evidence that Simon's cancer was avoidable; I have to view it as a very cruel twist of fate.

I believe that everything about what happened last Friday in Newtown was avoidable. Is avoidable. Yet we are witness to so much sacrifice, so much gratuitous harm.

Cancer is a devious foe that will demand more sacrifice and loss before it is vanquished. But guns? Just get rid of them. Imagine that. No more people shot dead. If only it were that easy to eliminate cancer. Can anyone imagine that we would not take the necessary steps?

Gun violence is inexcusable. And it is fully in our human power to make it go away.

I am sad to know that so many other families face tomorrow without their beloved first grader. It's an unfathomable loss.

[Readers who would like to know more about Simon and his struggle with cancer are invited to Simon's Place.]