When the doorbell rang, they had just finished dinner. Lori, the twelve-year-old, jumped up to answer the door before either her father or brother could rise, but she quickly returned to the dining room with a quizzical look on her face.
"It's a policeman, Daddy. He wants to talk to you," she reported.
A jolt of fear shot through Frank, but he tried to hide it from his children.
When he went to the door, he saw the caller was actually a Georgia State Trooper. "Are you Frank Parker?" the trooper asked.
"Yes," Frank confirmed.
"Are you the husband of Meredith Parker?"
When Frank nodded, the trooper looked at the two children and said, "May I speak with you in private, Mr. Parker?"
Frank felt his throat constrict, and he had to clear it before he could speak. "Bobby, Lori, please go to your rooms. I need to speak with the officer alone."
Both kids began to protest, but when their father barked "Now!" at them, they jumped and hurried to obey. They weren't used to hearing that tone of voice.
Once the children had left the room, the officer turned back to their father. "Mr. Parker, I've been asked to give you some bad news. Your wife's airplane is missing and presumed down. It dropped off the radar tonight approximately halfway between Miami International Airport and Nassau. A Coast Guard ship is in the area now, looking for survivors."
The facts were straightforward enough. In her role as regional sales VP for a major multinational corporation, Meredith had set out to visit their Caribbean headquarters in the Bahamas, accompanied by the region's chief financial officer. She was an experienced small plane pilot, so the 180-mile flight to Nassau should have been routine. As a result, Frank had thought nothing of it when Meredith had called to let him know her plans. Now, he was distraught. This had to be his worst nightmare: his wife's plane had crashed at night in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean Sea.
The officer provided a few additional details that did nothing to give Frank any encouragement before he left, promising that the Coast Guard would call with updates in the morning or earlier if there was any news..
No sooner had the door closed behind the trooper than both Bobby and Lori came running to his side, anxiety written on their faces, asking questions that their father couldn't answer. Frank knew they had been listening; he would have eavesdropped too if he'd been in their shoes.
The three of them clung to each other, each trying to find encouraging things to say to the others. Lori began to cry and although he was trying to be brave, Bobby's eyes were red as well. Frank did his best to keep it together for his children's sakes, but inside he was frantic.
There was no thought of cleaning the dishes or doing homework; their anguish kept the three of them within arm's length of each other for the rest of the evening. It grew past the children's normal bedtime, but still no phone call came. Finally, exhausted by the lateness of the hour and their fears, all three gravitated to the master bedroom, and the children slept with their Dad for the first time since they'd been little and afraid of thunderstorms.
They were up and trying to eat breakfast the next morning when a representative from the Coast Guard called. The slim hope stirred by the call was quickly dashed when the officer told Frank that the cutter searching the area had found nothing.
Frank called the principal at the middle school the kids attended to let her know why Bobby and Lori would be absent that day. Then he went to check on the two of them, only to find them in front of the television watching a report on the missing plane on CNN. Frank wasn't sure whether to let them keep watching or turn the set off, but before he could reach a decision, the phone began to ring again, and from that point on, whenever Frank would hang up from one call, another would come in. Not surprisingly, the first calls were from Meredith's parents and his own. All were frantic with worry while still trying to project a false optimism that she would miraculously be found. Frank promised to call back immediately with any news.
Next came the calls from their friends and colleagues of Meredith. All wanted to say or do something to help, but none of them had any idea how to do so. The conversations were short and awkward.
Most difficult of all were the calls from the media. He should have expected those, but Frank was caught off guard when the first reporter phoned, and he talked to the reporter from the
Journal-Constitution
much longer than he wanted. Then representatives from other media began calling, and when Frank realized what was happening, he began screening all the calls and returning only those from people about whom he cared.
Sometime during all this activity, the procession of neighbors and friends began, each set coming to their door with condolences and with food. At first their generosity was appreciated because Frank had no energy for preparing meals, but soon he and his children had more food than they could hope to eat in a week. It was an old Southern tradition to express concern and condolences with food, but while Frank appreciated the gesture, every roast and casserole was a bitter reminder that his wife of twenty years was almost certainly dead.
The next few days were horrible: the Parkers were virtual prisoners in their own home, kept there by their desire not to have to deal with other people and by their hope for some news from the Coast Guard. Frank made daily calls to the office in Miami for updates, but the reports were always negative.
Then, five days after the state trooper had arrived on their doorstep, came the news they'd been dreading. A Coast Guard officer called to tell Frank that wreckage from his wife's plane had been found. There were no signs of any survivors. "I'm sorry, sir," the officer concluded, "but we're going to have to cease search and rescue operations at this time."
Frank wanted nothing more than to hide away and mourn in solitude. But that option was not available; instead, he faced a seemingly endless list of responsibilities, all painful. The worst, of course, was having to tell Bobby and Lori the sad news and trying to console them. When they had finally calmed down, he had to phone relatives and close friends to let them know. Next was a call to their church to arrange for a memorial service, followed by one to the newspaper to submit an obituary. Then came more calls to share the time and date of the service. By the time he was done, Frank felt physically and emotionally exhausted.
Somehow the family made it through the service and began the slow, painful process of trying to resume a normal life. The following week the kids returned to school, and the resumption of their routine seemed to help a little.
Frank was not so fortunate. Now a whole new set of duties fell on his shoulders. At the urging of a friend, Frank contacted an attorney to find out what his legal responsibilities were. He was shocked to learn that he would have to petition for a death certificate. "But her plane crashed at sea!" he protested. "How can there be any doubt?"
"I know," the attorney commiserated, "but in the absence of a body and a physician's certificate, the court must make a formal declaration."
"Am I going to have to wait seven years?" Frank asked in distress.
"No," the attorney assured him, "in a case like this where an individual has been lost at sea, there's usually no significant delay. After the attack on the World Trade Center, death certificates were issued within a matter of days even though some of the bodies were never identified. You may have to answer some questions, but typically such cases are resolved very quickly."
"I can get the petition started for you," the attorney went on. "I can also help you get all your other documents changed."
When Frank looked confused, the attorney said, "You know, like any joint bank accounts, your mortgage, your insurance, car titles, your will -- anything like that. While I do that, you need to contact your wife's company to see about any benefits to which you may be entitled, as well as to claim any personal belongings."
Frank shook his head in weariness. In his grief, he hadn't never stopped to think just how complicated it would be to untangle the life he and his wife had shared.
Now he faced another chore that he dreaded: calling on the widow of John Collier, the financial executive who had been on the plane with Meredith. Frank had met Collier only a couple of times at his wife's company functions, but he had taken an immediate dislike to the executive. In Frank's eyes, Collier was one of those egotistical types who thought he was smarter than everyone else. In the brief time Frank had spent with the man, Collier managed to drop enough names and boast about his accomplishments enough to leave a bad taste in Frank's mouth. But that wasn't his widow's fault, Frank reminded himself, and he felt he had a duty to call on her.
Frank had phoned ahead, so Amanda Collier was expecting him. As the two exchanged condolences, Frank realized that she was probably the only one who truly knew how he was feeling.
When they'd been seated in her living room, she asked kindly, "So how are you doing now, Frank?"
"It's hard, Amanda, it's really hard. I just can't accept that she's really gone. So many things keep reminding me of her."
He shook his head helplessly. "You know what's the hardest thing? When I'm out on the street or in a crowd of people, I keep thinking that I've spotted her. The other day, I must have scared some poor woman half to death when I chased her down because I thought she was Meredith." He looked at the floor, recalling the memory and his emotions when he had realized what he was doing.
Amanda watched him with sympathetic eyes; she knew there weren't any words to help.
Finally, he looked up at her. "And how about you, Amanda, how are you doing?"
"It's not easy, Frank, but I'm going to make it," she told him. "The truth is I'm probably doing much better than you. John and I didn't have any children, so I don't have two to console the way you do. Also -- and I wouldn't tell this to anyone else -- John and I weren't getting along very well before all this happened. I'd caught him having a couple of flings in the past, and I think he was in the middle of another affair. If this hadn't happened, we'd probably be headed for divorce before too long."
