I’ve always considered Northeast Philadelphia my home.
I’ve never strayed far from the area, and I even commute to Temple’s campus every day because I can’t stomach the thought of being away from my neighborhood for too long.
The Northeast has the underlying grit of the rest of Philadelphia, all wrapped up in a facade of purity and wealth from its proximity to the suburbs. It’s a region with a rich history in farming and blue-collar work, which defines the identity and culture of the residents.
My neighborhood is no stranger to tragedy and is occupied by diverse communities like Rhawnhurst and immigrants just trying to scrape by. It’s overrun with auto shops, and the street constantly buzzes with trucks carrying lumber or speeding to their next home repair job.
But my beloved neighborhood was recently met with devastation. Earlier this month, a fireball fell from the sky on Cottman Avenue outside the Roosevelt Mall. A medical plane carrying six people slowly disintegrated in the air until it plummeted to the ground, sending debris flying in all directions.
I drove by the site of the crash just five minutes before the accident.
The memory of that drive home from school has been unreliable ever since it happened. I recall a vibration while driving that worked its way from the ground beneath me, through my tires, shaking the entirety of my body. Although I was close enough to feel it, I don’t know whether this is real or some fabricated memory I’ve conjured to make me feel a little better from narrowly avoiding death.
In the blink of an eye, the place I call home was suffocated by uncertainty. There was a collective scramble across the community as relatives that have long moved away called to ensure their families were safe.
A single instant changed and ended lives, and if I left Temple just five minutes later there’s a chance mine would’ve ended too. To sound a little cliche, lives can change in a moment, or as Joan Didion put it, an “ordinary instant.”
I still dwell on my decision to leave campus that day. I debated staying a little longer or making a pit stop to get a soda for the ride home. As much as I want to say I had a gut feeling to leave as soon as possible, not every narrow avoidance of casualty works that way.
Instead, it was simply by chance that I’m sitting here, writing this today. Luck works in mysterious, sometimes heinous ways, but I’m glad it gave me the opportunity to walk the Earth for longer, even if fate decides it’s my time to go soon.
I’ve grappled with the concept of death for a long time, but the crash reminded me I can’t choose what time God wants me to go. Instead, I’ve learned to make peace in the uncertainty and find the joy and tender love of the present, as much as I can.
After collecting myself from the shock of watching my community in disarray, I went around and hung out with the people I loved most. I needed a distraction to remind myself of the experiences I nearly missed out on.
I went to my sister’s room and let them talk relentlessly about their hermit crab tank because that’s what made them happy. I went to my best friends’ house to have aimless conversations so I could be around the two of the most important people in my life.
The Northeast has a lot of wounds, many healed, many scabbed over and begging to close. The plane crash is the latest gash in the list of traumas that have traipsed through.
I feared my community wouldn’t recover, and that the crash would send ripples of grief through an already vulnerable area. What’s left of the plane is a crater in the sidewalk — a stark reminder of the people who died and the injuries that encroached upon a rather quiet area.
Following the crash, a 10-year-old boy was hospitalized after a jagged piece of scrap metal burrowed into his skull. Bystanders wrapped their shirts and socks around the wound, hoping to buy him enough time to survive the emergency transport to the hospital. As of the latest updates, he’s making a miraculous recovery after not being expected to survive the night.
But if the young boy is any indicator of the determination of the Northeast, I am reassured this wound, too, will close.
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