Watching Airplanes

July 17, 2026

Photo by Илья Мельниченко on Unsplash

The phone rings. I look at the caller ID. A soft sigh escapes. Sometimes, I convince myself that the days between calls mean things are going well. The days with two or three calls usually mean the opposite. This is the second missed call.

“Hey, Pop,” I manage, my mouth full. His earlier call interrupted a chore I’d been avoiding for weeks; this time it’s just lunch. I swallow the dry wad of sandwich with a wince. “How ya doing? Is everything okay?”

“Yes.” A pause, then softer, “I don’t know. I just don’t feel good.”

The bite lands in my hollow stomach like a stone.

“Uh oh,” I say, or maybe I just think it really loud.

The first call like this came some twenty years ago and turned into a sort of shitty rite of passage. The news then was a cancer diagnosis. The following year was a recurrence, then a surgery or two, eventually a hip replacement, then a replacement of the replacement. Before long, something as simple as a “Hey, you busy…” or “Got a second to talk?” turned into a sense of dread. Often, it was premonitory. More surgeries led to stints in a nursing home, his wife’s dementia diagnosis, and a seemingly unending cavalcade of bad news. I’ve learned to anticipate phone calls like this, and yet, I’m never quite ready for the drop of the shoe that inevitably follows.

“What’s going on, Pop?” My voice softens, even as the ponies in my chest ramp up to an anxious gallop.

“I don’t know. Some days it gets so hard to be here, just sitting. I do nothing but eat, sleep, watch TV. Today, I couldn’t do it anymore.” I pause, waiting for him to continue. “I tried to visit Cee, and she couldn’t talk today, just babble. I miss her. No one knows how hard this is.”

There it is. The burr under his saddle. Not cancer, but just as sad. I apologize, unsure what else to say. Somedays, my stepmother remembers the life they had together and gets angry, accusing him of having a girlfriend — a fact highly unlikely for a man of almost 80, tethered permanently to a walker with bad hips, one bad shoulder, and a laundry list of medical grievances.

“So, did you get out? Take a drive?”

“Sort of,” he says quietly. “The airport has an observation deck, so sometimes I just go sit and watch the planes take off.”

I smile, but it’s not happiness. He’s told me this before, maybe even earlier in the same call, if not twice the last time we talked. I wonder if it’s a cry for help or something concerning that I’m not quite ready to face.

Memories of going to the airport with him spring up from the recesses of childhood. Sunday afternoons, riding the tram round and round with no destination other than our own enjoyment, back when that sort of thing was allowed for non-passengers. My small hand would grasp his, large and safe. Now, I’m 800 miles away, and he’s sitting alone in his senior high-rise.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I swallow back a few tears. “Yeah, I just… you sound like a country song.”

He laughs and some of the tension dissolves. I sing a line of a Gary Allan country song about, well, watching airplanes. I laugh; he laughs again. We talk about the weather for a few more minutes until he tells me he has to go.

I stare at the half-eaten sandwich, still thinking about the country song. Gary sings about lost love and wondering which plane carries his sweetheart away. My dad knows Alzheimer’s is the plane carrying Cee away, a few miles farther each day.

The sadness settles over me in silence. I’ve learned so much about loss and loneliness in the last few years. It seems to surround me wherever I look: My parents, my friends, my neighbors, even strangers eating alone at 4:30 at the local Cracker Barrel. Sometimes, it’s more than I can take. I wish I could unsee the looks of grief and longing in their gazes as their loved ones fade away from memory, or, sometimes, right in front of their eyes.

I don’t think he likes me writing about him, but I feel propelled to do so. His is a misunderstood emotional path: to watch the person he loves most die without physically leaving. Others judge him for admitting the obvious, for not being able to always handle his grief with grace. I know that love isn’t supposed to be sunshine and butterflies all the time. Sometimes, love bites and you need to nurse those painful wounds. For him, watching those metal behemoths take flight does something to soothe his soul.

My hope is that maybe, today, he can picture himself in one of those big jetliners, starting a journey instead of ending one. Maybe, for a moment, he can be someone else, somewhere else, flying high and free instead of just sitting and watching airplanes.