Originally Posted by
gemac
If you get the same call, I would urge you to go. When you're sitting in the rocker on the porch of the old folk's home, you won't say "Gee, I wish I'd stayed home". Even if you don't quite get there in time, you won't regret going.
+one million!
My late best friend died of cancer in his 20s (leaving behind a wife and two children). When things were bad, I booked tickets to visit the weekend after my wife's MFA show.
The week before our scheduled travel date, I was leaving work, and received a call from his mother, who said "come as soon as you can." As I was going to the train station, and called Alaska Airlines. They looked at change fees, and told me to just buy a new ticket, so I did. I said, "My best friend is dying in Seattle. What is the next flight I can be on." She put me on the first flight I could get to the airport for. Instead of getting off at my home train station, I went to the airport and headed straight for security, with my laptop bag. I made it to the his ICU about four hours after the call came in.
Some parts of the trip were gross (I went straight from work, so I didn't have any fresh clothes or a toothbrush), some parts were logistically hard (I had to redeem points for a hotel room the morning of check out), but I would do it again in a heartbeat. The only thing I would do differently is try harder to get my wife to come, because he died 3 or 4 days later. (We wound up using the original tickets for the funeral.)
To make a long post short:
gemac is right. To make it even shorter:
Go.
(Sorry if this is off-topic for the forum. I have no experience with AA's policies in these matters, but I feel strongly that if you travel frequently enough to read FT, you can make it all work out and you should show up.)