#MalaysiaAirlines, #MH370,
#PrayForMH370 #MengenangMH370
Loved one of TWA crash victim feels pain, loss of Malaysia Airlines families
Courtesy Heidi Snow Cinader
|
When TWA Flight 800 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 1996, all
230 people aboard were killed. One passenger, Michel Breistoff, was the
fiancé of Heidi Snow. After the tragedy, Snow founded AirCraft Casualty Emotional Support Services (ACCESS) and wrote "Surviving Sudden Loss: Stories from those who have lived it"
about her loss and experiences with the many generous volunteer grief
mentors who have helped to provide emotional support for the nearly 18
years since.
Michel and I met in the summer of 1994 in
Martha’s Vineyard. He was from Lille, France, and a Harvard senior and I
was working in finance in Boston. He was playing for a professional
hockey team when he left for Paris on TWA Flight 800 to prepare to play
for a hockey team in Europe. I was to join him in a week or so after I
finished studying for a finance exam. We had our entire lives planned
out together.
My mother called that evening to tell me about the
crash. I turned on the TV to witness the burning debris in the dark
waters off Long Island. TWA’s 800 telephone number was perpetually
busy.
Finally, friends of mine went to the airport and confirmed that
Michel was on the passenger manifest. The press announced that they were
looking for survivors. Search teams were in life rafts so that helped
me to hold on to hope that he had survived.
I thought, “Michel is
so strong that he will, of course, survive. He cannot possibly be
gone.” That was unthinkable. And so I waited with hope for Michel’s
return. The next morning they called off the rescue operation to pursue
one of recovery. I kept thinking that any minute he would walk through
the door.
ACCESS/Heidi Snow Cinader
|
In
my mind, we did not say goodbye forever.
We said goodbye only for those
hours before he would arrive in Paris and could call me. The grief
site closed down after a few weeks, and I had to return home still
hoping for his return. But then after five weeks they found his remains
and the waiting and hoping were over.
Like thousands of loved
ones of the 230 people who perished on that Paris-bound flight, I was
left in unspeakable grief and torment. My life was changed forever. As
the initial shock subsided during the first weeks and months, the agony
intensified. My future was with Michel, but now he wasn’t there.
Finally,
after looking for an air disaster support group in New York City to no
avail, I called Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s office. He advised that I might
benefit from meeting with friends and families of victims from Pan Am
Flight 103, which was destroyed by a terrorist bomb in 1988. It had been
eight years and they were living examples that you can survive the
emotional devastation after having loved ones ripped from their lives.
I
realized that the help they gave me could be extended to all the others
left behind after Flight 800. I recognized the need for access to
long-term emotional support from those who had already survived the
sudden loss of a loved one in air disasters.
The idea of creating
ACCESS, and pairing grief mentors to callers with similar relationships
lost, was borne from my direct personal experience, my observations and
learning from others what they had found most helpful in dealing with
their grief.
The front cover of 'Surviving Sudden Loss: Stories from those who have lived it.' |
For
example, a woman with four children who lost her husband on the TWA
flight found it especially comforting to get help from a woman with
children who had lost her husband years earlier on Pan Am 103. She had
already dealt with the challenges of helping her children through their
grief and all the changes they suddenly faced from the loss of their
father.
Grief is a common tie for everyone who loses a loved one
suddenly, but there are collective logistics among women left with young
children to raise alone, among children who lose their parents, and
among fiancés, spouses and significant others who lose the loves of
their lives.
Through the Pan Am group, I met two women who had
lost their fiancés years earlier and had already dealt with some issues
specific to my loss. We had all experienced sudden death
indiscriminately taking away our loved ones as we were just setting out
to begin careers and marriages. Their stories had a special significance
for me and showed me the importance of having a model of survival from a
similar type of loss. That is why we pair mothers to mothers, spouses
to spouses, children to children and others based on relationships lost.
Matching the grief-stricken seeking our emotional support to the most
appropriate mentor was my goal from the start and is a distinctive
feature of the grief support through ACCESS.
ACCESS first provided
services after the crash of Swissair Flight 111 in Nova Scotia in
September 1998. Then came EgyptAir Flight 990, which crashed over
Nantucket in 1999, and Alaska Air Flight 261, which crashed into the
Pacific Ocean north of Los Angeles in 2000. Then, of course, came 9/11.
It is heartbreaking now to see the families connected to Malyasia
Airlines Flight 370.
The most important thing that we at ACCESS
say to the families of the Malaysia crash is that we are very sorry for
their losses and that we remember and truly understand their pain. Their
experience reawakens all our memories. We want them to know that even
though it will be very difficult and take a very long time, that they
will get through it just as we did. At times it will seem overwhelming
but we will be with them for as long as they need our help.
Given
the unknown and the mystery around the Malaysian Airlines 370, we
realize some will continue to hope that eventually answers will be found
and others will accept that they may never learn these answers.
Everyone
determines his own timeline for continuing to hope for answers and
everyone is allowed to react differently to the unknowns. It is OK to be
angry. It is OK to be sad. It is OK to yell, or sit quietly. It is OK
to protest or bow your heads.
We accept them and let them vent
and respond to their situation the way they feel they need to. While
air disasters are always associated with delays in finding wreckage,
remains of loved ones and the cause of the crash, the Malaysian Air 370
disaster is especially challenging. We empathize with the pain of not
knowing what our loved ones felt and went through in their final
moments.
Ultimately, we stand with them in their grief.
Heidi Snow Cinader is married and has two daughters, ages 3 and 6. She lives in San Francisco, where ACCESS is headquartered. Her story was told with the help of TODAY.com's Kavita Varma-White.
No comments:
Post a Comment