An hour later, I stood at the front door hugging my mother as my father waited in the back of the large Mercedes S600, the uniformed driver standing by the passenger side, holding open the back door. My father had decided he didn’t want me taking them to the airport after all.
“We’ll straighten all this out when we return, all right,” my mother said, holding my cheeks in her hands.
I hugged her once more, wishing I could go with her but knowing my trial schedule wouldn’t allow it.
When the driver opened the door, I caught a glimpse of my father. I looked at him with an expression on my face pleading for us to talk further. He looked away.
At 1:24 a.m. I woke up, startled out of my sleep by a ringing phone. I rolled over in bed, clumsily answering the call.
My eyes were barely open, my voice was groggy. “Hello.”
It was my sister. She was crying, hysterically. I could barely understand her through her tears when she gave me the news.
At 5:13 a.m. I stood, my arm tightly around Sissy’s shoulder, the two of us waiting in the emergency room of the Indiana hospital where survivors of the Delta 767 plane crash had been taken.
One hundred sixty passengers were already confirmed dead, but Sissy and I had not yet heard whether our parents were among those listed.
Sissy told me she had worked late, like she always did, over at Winslow Products headquarters in downtown Chicago.
She said she didn’t walk in the door of her house till almost eleven. After having a drink and winding down, she sat on the living room sofa and clicked on CNN. The news of our parents’ plane going down on an Indiana farm not long after takeoff was all over the news. She phoned me moments later.
Now Sissy and I stood in the emergency room, waiting for a close friend of our family, Roger Welkin, to walk back through the door.
He was a police detective, knew important people working for the National Transportation Safety Bureau, and could find out whether our parents had survived the crash.
When I saw Mr. Welkin enter the room, I could not read the man’s blank face. But when he approached Sissy and me and politely asked if we would follow him to the back of the room, where we could sit and talk, I knew.
The funeral was held one week later at Trinity United Church of Christ, on the South Side of Chicago. It was the same church President Obama and his family had attended when they lived here.
Scores of cars moved slowly into the parking lots around the church, while countless stretch limos with darkened glass sidled up to the curbs, letting out Chicago celebrities and VIPs.
To say the event was well attended was an understatement. Because my father had such high standing in the community, everyone from Kanye West and Jesse Jackson, to Al Sharpton and former mayor Daley attended, as well as members of the Johnson family, publishers of Ebony and Jet.
As everyone entered, they gave me looks of sympathy, shook my hand, and hugged me and my sister.
I watched the sea of people coming to mourn my parents and was happy when I saw Tyler. He walked over to me, shook my hand, leaned in to me, and whispered, “You’re going to get through this. I’m here for you.”
Because my parents’ remains were never found, there were no coffins or urns, only two large portraits of my mother and father and a snapshot taken years ago that we had blown up. It was a picture of them at a hair care conference in Atlanta. They had never looked happier in their lives.
Sissy and I sat in the first pew, holding hands. I felt hers trembling in mine, heard her sobbing, though I knew she did everything in her power for me or anyone else not to notice. My father had raised her to be strong, to never show weakness, and although she made an earnest attempt, the grief was too much for her to bear.
The reverend, a bearded, distinguished-looking man who had known my father for thirty years, had been speaking for only a moment, but the words of love and loss must have cut deeply into my sister’s soul. Helpless, she cried louder. She pressed her handkerchief harder against her face, but she could not muffle her pain.
Shaking her head, she turned to me with tear-flooded eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.” Sissy stood and hurried away. I reached out for her and considered following, but felt like I’d be abandoning my parents. I couldn’t do that. So I sat there, feeling the tears crawling down my cheeks.
I had cursed my father, told him I had never believed he loved me, because he had kept me from my brother. He made me walk through this life by myself, when I had a twin all along. But the loneliness I had then was nothing compared to how alone I felt now that I had lost my mother and father.