Buffalo in December is as close to living in the metaphoric frozen over hell as one gets. It's cold. Not normal cold. Cold that makes snot freeze while still in one's nose. Snow is beautiful unless you have responsibilities that require you to leave the house. The snow piles in a way that turns all residents of the Queen City into amateur archaeologists every morning as a requirement to drive to work, and when work is over it's dark. Because night time starts at 430 pm in the winter time in Buffalo.
So under these circumstances the Rock Star and I decided a vacation was due, so off we went to The land of Incas, llamas and coca.
This bears some explanation. The hell that is the Christmas season in Buffalo aside, I had ulterior motives for our vacation. My cousin and her family, my step mother and little brother are all in Peru. As the second Christmas without my dad was fast approaching it was time for me to go, I needed to be with my family, I needed to meet my brother. As the Rock Star and I were gone for a week this blog will be broken into multiple parts. This one will deal with the back story of how our Peru trip came to be.
Rewind to April 2012.
Driving down a back dirt road on my way to Tennessee with the Rock Star for a quick vacation when my baby sister calls, obviously upset. My knee jerk assumption is that she is experiencing some form of male douche baggery and needs some sisterly advice, or someone to confirm said douche baggery.
Instead she informed me that my father's plane had gone down in the South Pacific and he was now missing.
The earth stopped spinning. Life as I had known it had just ceased to exist. I lost my footing, metaphorically and actually, and the ability to catch my breath eluded me.
The Rock Star jumped into action, got me back in the car, turned us around and drove directly to my sister's house 12 hours away where the story of what would become my father's death finally unfolded over days of talking to various government officials and existing, somehow simultaneously, in four different time zones. I'll related the abridged version here.
My father was one of three pilots on a small island called Palau. On April 1, 2012 he was effectively the only pilot on the island when the police decided they needed the services of a pilot to assist in a search for "clam poachers" (an assertion that the government clings to, but that my sister and I take issue with) who had given chase after being stopped off the coast. The poachers gave chase to a larger vessel, they paused long enough to set the vessel on fire and then continued across the Pacific. It was at this point that the police decided to enlist the services of my father, sending two police officers with him to attempt to determine where the poachers had fled to. Dad searched the area for hours until his GPS malfunctioned. What happened next is undetermined. Somehow my father lost his bearings and couldn't find the airport. His last May Day call was that he was out of fuel, gliding and going to attempt a water landing.
No one on board has been heard from since.
No wreckage has been recovered.
All three lost at sea, still, at the time of this writing.
Willie Mays Towai, Palauan police officer left behind a mother, siblings and a little girl. Earle Decherong, also a Palauan police officer, left behind a large, wonderful family including two little girls of his own. And my father left us. A large, extended family. Friends around the globe. And three children: myself, at 27, my sister, at 22 and my baby brother at just 5 years old.
A week later, after confirming for my mother that kidnappers in the South Pacific don't take the chubby white girls with bad attitudes (we're more trouble than we're worth), and convincing my friends that, yes, Palau exists and then, subsequently, pointing it out for them on a map (NY public schools need to work on their geography program), I left for Palau.
I was there for a month, grieving, making friends, spending time with my sister- who stayed for six months, and absorbing an island culture of free roaming chickens, children, and alcohol. It was while on island my cousin, sister, step mother and I decided that this trip would happen now. I had never met my brother and Dad's kids needed to be together all in one place to complete our process of closure.
In the days I spent in Palau I came to understand many things. Islanders don't put signs up to warn people that the road is washed out. Chickens are pets. Children bounce. Drunk driving laws are negotiable. Poisonous snake are attracted to white girls from Buffalo. My father was loved beyond compare. Family is important always, but it is essential in times of great loss and tragedy.
A year and a half later the Rock Star and I drove across the border to board a plane in Canada that would take us first to Miami and then to Lima, Peru so that I could meet my brother and spend time with my cousin, her kids and husband and my step mother.
Stay tuned for part 2!
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