I was breastfeeding my five-month-old baby on a crowded airplane when the woman sitting beside me suddenly exploded.
“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she shouted. “Go lock yourself in the bathroom!”
For a moment, I simply froze.
I could feel dozens of eyes turning toward us. My face burned with embarrassment, and I instinctively pulled the nursing cover closer around my son.
I had already apologized to her twice.
What she didn’t know was that I had buried my husband only a month earlier.
I wasn’t on that airplane because life was going well. I was on it because I was trying to escape, even if only temporarily, the unbearable weight of grief.
My husband, Mark, had been just 37 years old when he died after a nine-month illness. Losing him had left our family shattered. Every room in our home seemed to remind me of him. Every ordinary task felt impossible.
So when my mother invited my children and me to stay with her for a while, I accepted.
I needed a break from the nightmare.
I needed somewhere I could breathe.
And that was how I ended up on a six-hour flight with my five-month-old son, Noah, and my eight-year-old daughter, Louise.
The flight was completely full, which meant Louise couldn’t sit beside me. Instead, she had been assigned a seat one row behind us.
