Finding Connection

This is the third post in a series about my experience in the immediate aftermath of the collision (part one: The Night It Happened). Revisiting this period is helpful to me, but reading about it may not be helpful to you. Feel free to skip this one if you might find it upsetting.

My first overnight in Bethesda, Md., following the Flight 5342 collision felt like a fever dream. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, so unlike the night it happened, I did fall asleep. But I would only sleep for an hour at a time before waking up with a jolt of panic. It was the same feeling as waking up from a nightmare, without the relief that comes with realizing it was only a dream.

During the periods between sleep, I paced my hotel room. I also caught up on the news coverage from the previous day. I was surprised to see that those early local TV interviews I did the day after — along with the photos I had provided to my neighbor Ken — had made their way around the world.

Even though I knew I had been thrust into the center of something big, Christine and Spencer were two of 67 people who were lost. But because I had — mostly through happenstance and good advice from Ken — proactively shared their story and images, it was being told on my terms rather than stitched together from social media fragments and the words of people who weren’t as close to them.

As much as I was hurting over the loss of Christine and Spencer, thinking about all of Spencer’s friends back at the Skating Club of Boston hit nearly as hard. Spencer had close friends he trained with daily, including some as young as 11. I pictured them smiling and joking with Spencer, and I wondered what they were feeling and what their faces looked like now.

As I wrote about in “Big Siblings”, seeing the more senior skaters, along with legends like Nancy Kerrigan and Tenley Albright, giving voice to the Skating Club of Boston on TV brought me so much comfort. I knew Spencer’s friends were hurting, but they were navigating it as a community with strong leaders guiding them.

In the years leading up to the collision, Spencer was active on TikTok, often sharing highlights of his skating journey. The combination of his charisma and uncommonly rapid progress with advanced skating skills earned him a sizable following. As far away as Canada, he would be recognized at skating events or local practice sessions as “Spencer from TikTok” — a mini-celebrity in figure skating circles.

During my bouts of sleeplessness, I popped open TikTok and saw an endless stream of tribute videos that friends — or just people he inspired from afar — had edited together and set to songs like Taylor Swift’s “Bigger Than the Whole Sky.” Mainlining these videos probably doesn’t seem like the best cure for insomnia, but they helped. They made me feel less alone in my grief and proud of the impact Spencer had on so many people in so few years.

My sister, Amanda, and I had agreed the night before to be downstairs at the family assistance area by 7 a.m. We figured that was the earliest the response personnel would arrive for the day.

When we arrived at that time, it was still pretty quiet. We walked into one of the hotel meeting rooms, sat down, and waited. I felt lost, dejected, and powerless. The look on Amanda’s face told a similar story. My brain was still operating at 40 percent capacity.

Three more people walked in and sat on the other side of the room — followed eventually by a fourth. I was trying not to eavesdrop, but it soon became obvious that they were the parents, wife, and brother of another passenger. They were clearly wandering through the same cloud of grief and confusion as us.

They represented the version of reality where I was on the plane and Christine, Amanda, and my parents were left behind to deal with the aftermath.

It was a coin flip.

Earlier in the skating season, when Spencer was competing at the Lake Placid Figure Skating Championships, I brought him to his practice sessions while Christine and Milo took in some sights and shopping. At some point, Christine arrived at the Herb Brooks Arena, site of the famous 1980 “Miracle on Ice,” to catch the tail end of one of Spencer’s practices.

Suddenly, Spencer couldn’t do anything right. Something about her presence threw him off. This freaked him out, and he asked Christine not to come to either of his competition sessions. He ended up skating well and making the podium.

But a superstition was born.

For the remainder of the season, Christine and I split duties for Spencer’s daily training sessions. But at Spencer’s insistence, Christine did not attend another competition all season. Just Spencer and I went to every competition, including traveling by plane to the Philadelphia Summer Championships. I would send Christine text play-by-plays and video clips, and she would watch on the live stream if one was available.

When Spencer won Eastern Sectionals and qualified to attend U.S. Figure Skating’s development camp in Wichita, Christine and I talked briefly about who would travel with him. We discussed me going, but since he wasn’t competing, Spencer was receptive to Christine going. We decided it was a long-overdue opportunity for her to experience a major event in Spencer’s skating season with him.

Since I traveled frequently for business, I tended to be the family travel logistics person. So I started making arrangements, occasionally calling over to Christine in the next room to run the options by her.

For the trip to Wichita, I booked them on an American flight connecting through Chicago. When I looked at return flights, there were two options that would have worked: Chicago or Washington, D.C.

Another coin flip.

Back in Bethesda, as I watched the other family across the room, part of me wished it had been me on the plane instead of Christine. But the vision of her feeling what I was feeling — overwhelming grief, confusion, and a brain that refused to work when I needed it the most — also made me feel ill.

I mustered the courage to walk over and speak to the other family. My own grief subsided a bit as they told me about their family member. My brain capacity temporarily rose from 40 percent to about 70 percent as I thought about the challenges they were facing.

I think they would say that I helped them. But they helped me by making me see that I was not alone and I was not powerless.

I had discovered the cheat code that would help me survive the next year and a half:

1. Connect with other family members.
2. Find a place in my heart for their loved ones alongside Christine and Spencer.
3. Find ways to be helpful to others to crowd out the pain and frustration at times when I can’t help Christine, Spencer, or myself.
4. Give other families the same power by accepting their help when I need it — and when their strengths compensate for my weaknesses.

The coin flips still haunt me. But I am thankful to have learned so early on that not everything is a coin flip. My actions — and the collective voice of the entire Flight 5342 family group — hold real power.

If you found this interesting or moving, consider making a donation to the Christine Conrad Lane Memorial Dog Park.