Oncology Massage

The Woman on the Plane: a short, “true” story

She and her husband were in the last boarding group for the early morning flight on Southwest. They rushed onto the plane just before the doors closed. The husband came down the aisle first, squinting towards the back of the plane, his unzipped jacket lightly brushing the elbows of everyone in the aisle seats. He strode past my row, near the back of the plane and found a seat.

She stomped behind him, lips pressed together and breathing in sharp little exhales. She wore a black scarf wound artfully around her head, eyelashes too long to be real, and perfectly arranged black leggings under a voluminous, colorful sweater.

Photo by Bashir Olawoyin on Pexels.com

Only middle seats were left on the plane. In my row, a quiet older woman had the window seat and I had the aisle. The woman in the black scarf carried a half-unzipped backpack in front of her. She stumbled over the emergency light strip just before my row and a tumble of makeup, brushes and lotions spilled from her bag. She blew a forceful gust of air through her lips and crouched down in the aisle to pick everything up.

She mumbled to herself as she filled her hands with the debris from her backpack. When a man on the aisle leaned in to help, she waved a hand at him and shook her head. Finally, she scooped everything from the floor back into her pack, pulled the zipper mostly closed and shoved it into the bin right above my head.

She stood in the aisle then, right next to my elbow, scanning the back rows. “Stan!” she whispered, “How could you do me like — ” and she sighed deeply. She looked down at the empty seat in the middle of my row and started to climb over me to reach it.

“Please let me stand,” I said. I got up to stand in the aisle, brushing heavily against her as I did. She did not move from her position right against my seat. Her gaze hovered somewhere behind me and her brows knit together ever more tightly.

She took her seat, crossed her legs and arms and started bouncing her foot. “. . . so stressed out . . ” she said, then pushed her scarf-covered head into the headrest and closed her eyes.

Up close, I could see that the eyelashes were, indeed, fake. Also, her perfect brows were drawn on. Underneath the expertly applied foundation, her skin hovered at a shade between pale and gray. Her nails were acrylic and the fingertips underneath were chapped and red.

You never know what someone is going through, but in this case, I had an inkling. I put aside my book (The Cancer Chronicles) and spent the flight focused on loving kindness meditation for her, and for everyone on the plane.

May you be well.

May you be free from suffering.

May you live with ease.

Near the end of the flight, as she and the other woman in the row started talking, I learned she was on her way to a treatment center for a recurrence of her cancer. She named the type and the diagnosis. It was familiar to me, as was the typical prognosis. (May you be free from suffering.)

She mentioned neuropathy and I asked if I could show her something that helped my clients sometimes. She agreed and as the plane landed, all three of us in the row held our left hands with our right hands and gently, mindfully, lovingly paid attention to every part of our fingers and hands.

In the moments before boarding, we learned that I had worked at the center where she would be getting treatment, and the woman in the window seat was also suffering from neuropathy — hers related to an auto-immune condition.

“See –” the woman in the scarf said, “We’re all family and we didn’t even know it until now.”

Except that if we are paying attention, we know it all the time.