The kindness of strangers: a gentle flight attendant made me feel I wasn’t alone

8 hours ago 6

I’d completely forgotten it was my little sister’s 40th birthday, so that morning I hurriedly arranged to send some flowers to her house. She died before she could receive them. My sister died at 11am and I got a text from the florist saying they’d delivered the flowers at 11.30am – how ridiculous. They must have sat on her doorstep for days.

I got the call as I was walking through the doors at Emerald airport in Queensland, about to fly home to Brisbane. My stepdad rang me and said, “I need to talk to you about something – your sister’s died.” I was like, “What? What do you mean?” I told him I was about to hop on a plane home and that I’d call him when I got on the ground. I hung up, stunned.

I kind of held it together until we had to walk out to the airstrip, when I realised I was walking towards my sister’s death. It was horrible. I sat down on the plane, sobbing. One of the flight attendants knelt down next to me and asked if there was anything he could do to help. I said, “My sister has just died, I don’t think anyone can help.” He just held my hand and said, “We’ll get you back to Brisbane.”

He didn’t try to tell me everything will be all right, because it clearly wouldn’t have been. Just, “We’ll get you back to Brisbane.” Throughout the flight he brought my water, checked in on me and helped me get off the plane quickly when we landed.

One might say that’s his job. But it wasn’t, actually. It was so above and beyond what he needed to do as cabin crew, especially on a short flight where everyone’s just trying to get it over and done with. He was really gentle, kind and sweet. If he hadn’t been there I would have just sat there sobbing on my own – certainly the person sitting next to me didn’t engage at all, not that I blame them for that.

The flight attendant made me feel as though I wasn’t alone on that plane. When I think about my sister now, I think of him.