The Last Flight of Diana Cooper

Diana was dying.

Diana Cooper was my grandmother. My mother's mother. Diana had always been known for her razor-sharp wit, and at 70, she hadn't lost it at all. Up until recently, she was also shockingly active for someone her age.

Sadly, despite her natural spryness, her immune system had begun to give in to the cancerous cells forming on her pancreas which brought her life to a screeching halt.

For most of her life Diana was a journalist. She traveled the world investigating crimes against humanity. She had done work exposing the dangerous rhino poaching trade in Namibia, underage sex trafficking in India, and the tourism exploitation of Costa Rican shamans.

Yeah, you could say my grandmother was a total badass.

She took a break from her danger-filled career when she got pregnant with my mother in 1979. She stayed at home raising my mom until she was a teenager, but Diana was never a woman who was meant to stay in one place. She was so fiercely independent that even when she married my grandfather, she refused to change her last name. Eventually, Diana Cooper's heart was called back out into the world and she returned to her life of adventure and activism.

My mother died when I was five. I lived primarily with my father but whenever Diana was home from her travels, I stayed with her. My grandmother and I were incredibly close; I inherited Diana's fierce curiosity and insatiable hunger for knowledge which bonded us greatly over the years. I remember spending hours as a child poking around her study, creating epic stories and intricate universes around the knick-knacks and treasures strewn about her shelves.

She continued to nourish my passion for learning by taking me on trips to museums, aquariums, nature preserves, planetariums, anywhere that would quench my thirst for information. As I got older I would accompany her on some of her philanthropic travels, learning about the world through her lens of wonder and compassion.

She taught me to hold on tightly to my fascination with the world and to always treat everything, both living and non, with love, respect, and reverence. Diana was a lover of life and of people. A genuine heart without being naive, she had the tendency to bring out the best in everyone she knew.

Safe to say our closeness made it all the more devastating when I received the news of her diagnosis. The disease started off progressing slowly, then almost overnight began to ravage her body quickly enough to prompt her doctor into giving her the unfortunate news that she was not long for this world.

It was a Wednesday afternoon when I received a call from the nurse who had been spending the afternoon with Diana at her home. She refused to stay at the hospital and demanded the dignity of her house, even though her cancer was at the stage where every single phone call made my heart sink into my stomach.

“Hello?” I answered tensely.

“Hi, Jessie?” It was Diana’s day nurse. “She’s been asleep for most of the day, but she just woke up and started asking for you.”

“Just me specifically?”

“Yeah. She woke up and the first thing out of her mouth was that she needed to talk to you. I’m very sorry, but… I think she might be close.”

A wave of heat crashed over my body like the wind of an open oven door, every one of my pores stinging as they began to sweat. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

Doing my best not to let on to just how tightly the anxiety began to grip my vocal cords, I managed to gruff up an “I’ll be right there” before hanging up the phone and preparing myself for the worst.

When I arrived at my grandmother’s house I found the nurse sitting in a chair by the window of her room, a book sitting open and face down on her lap.

Even through her weariness, when Diana saw me a grin erupted across her face. Her smile was warm and inviting, a smile that always seemed to say, ‘I see you.’

“My Jessie girl.”

“Hi Grandma,” I said as I leaned into her bed for a hug. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, you know. I’m feeling it all.”

I smiled meekly at her sarcasm.

“Dear,” she said, addressing the nurse, “could you give us the room? Top secret information being exchanged here.”

The nurse obliged and slipped out of the room leaving just me and Diana, sitting in a heavy silence that made me think there actually might be some top secret information waiting for me.

“Sit, my girl.”

I sat in the chair the nurse had just left, the warmth of her presence still deep in the fabric.

“Listen, there are things I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but it was never the right time. I don’t think I have much longer, Jessie. I can feel it. And I couldn’t tell you this before I was close. I hope once you know, you’ll understand.”

With my eyes swelling with tears and my chest in a vice grip, it was all I could do to nod in trepidatious affirmation. Diana was always a straightforward person so her method of delivery was of no shock. But she was also incredibly intuitive and seemingly in sync with the universe, which made me believe that her gut feeling about the end of her life was probably correct.

“Do you remember all the trips I took to El Salvador?”

“Yeah, I remember,” I answered, confused as to where this was going.

“That was the first place I ever learned what femicide was. The murder rate of women in that country is rival to none. It’s really horrific what goes on there.”

I stared at her perplexedly.

“There was only so much I could do for them legally. Their government didn’t care to fund shelters. And the ones they did weren’t always safe. There would be raids, break-ins, confrontations. A lot of women couldn’t even make it there. So I had to do things… secretly.”

She shifted in her bed, wincing as she maneuvered her frail body.

“Sometimes what’s ethical isn’t always legal. And sometimes secrets are important to keep. Some things have to happen for the greater good.”

“Grandma, I’m really not sure I understand.”

“I promise, you will. When it’s finally my time, I want you to go to my cabin in Oregon and look for your favorite book. The one I used to read to you all the time when you were little.”

I looked at her deeply, understanding that this was something important.

“Remember, Jessie Girl, I love you endlessly.”

Diana Cooper died the next day.

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When I entered the cabin I was greeted by the scent of cinnamon sticks and well worn book pages. The entire space still seemed so full of Diana’s energy.

I began to scan her bookcase for the familiar spine of the book in question. I finally spotted it, The Secret Garden, a beautiful forest green hardcover book with intricate gold filigree swirling around the binding.

I opened the book to find it had been hollowed out to hold a smaller, black notebook. With my breathing shallow and my heart in my throat, I opened the notebook and began reading the last message I’d ever receive from Diana.

“Jessie Girl,

If you’ve found this notebook I can only assume I am either dead or close to it. Please don’t be sad. I’ve lived a full and meaningful life. So full, in fact, that it would not all fit in mine. That, my girl, is where you come in.

There have been many things in my life I have been proud of, but you have been one of the greatest. Your love, tenderness, and awe towards the world around you has reminded me so much of myself. This is why you are the only one I can trust to carry on what I’ve started.

I must begin by telling you that your grandfather was not my first love. While I loved him dearly until the day he died, there was another. I also must admit to you that the grandfather you knew was not actually your grandfather at all.

My maiden name is not Cooper. I was born Diana Benson. The very first time I went to El Salvador I met Harry Cooper, a pilot from Oregon who was hired to fly our media company into the crisis zone.

In a whirlwind, Harry and I fell in love and were married. Harry shared the same passion I did for helping people. We traveled the world together doing our best to expose violent crimes and tell the stories of people who needed to be heard. We were driven by our deep need to help people, but what we were doing never felt like enough.

Harry and I realized that if we really wanted to help people, we needed money. A lot of it. Unfortunately, at the time, neither one of us was making enough to make a significant difference.

That’s when we planned the hijacking.

While I wasn’t famous, I was much more recognizable in the media than Harry was. It had to be him.

We planned the whole thing out. It was only a 45 minute flight. Harry would assume an alias, carry out the hijacking, collect the ransom, and jump out of the plane to meet me at our cabin. This cabin.

Unfortunately, Harry never made it back to Earth alive. I suspect it was a heart attack mid-air. Harry was always braver than his body was.

Just one week after his death, I found out I was pregnant with your mother.

When I found his body, I buried him in the woods. I took the ransom money and hid it all throughout the forests of the Pacific North West, making sure to choose wilderness that was dense enough to swallow the average person whole.

This is the cache I’ve used to help people for the last forty years. I have used it to give shelter to battered women from El Salvador, ferry out refugee families from Syria, and rescue trafficked children from China.

In my safe upstairs you will find three things. First, you will find twenty-thousand dollars. This is for you to do with what you see fit. Second, you will find the deed to this cabin, which I am also leaving to you. This was a place of solace during my life and I hope it is for you, too. Lastly, you will find a map. This map will guide you to the locations where I hid the rest of the money.

I trust you, Jessie Girl. You have so much to give to the world.

With love forever,

Diana Benson Cooper

D.B. Cooper”