It was a difficult day. In a few hours I will have my thirty prices of silver for betraying the one I love, my fifteen year old…the one to whom I had given birth…she was the one I created…the object of my affection. Maybe not birthed from my loins but I certainly worked my ass off bring her into this world.
My limp and lifeless body moaned a remorseful dirge. I felt like crying but at the
age of seventy I knew I was no longer a child so I just crawled into bed and
pulled the covers over my head.
Fifteen years ago I took her up for her maiden voyage. It has been fifteen years of
adventures…fifteen years of flying to far away places…places north of the
Arctic Circle…places only reached by birds…and…places beyond. John Gillespie Magee,
Jr. captures my feelings best in his poem “High Flight.”
“Oh!
I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And
danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward
I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of
sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You
have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High
in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've
chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My
eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up,
up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've
topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where
never lark, or even eagle flew -
And,
while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The
high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put
out my hand and touched the face of God.”
But I must accept the reality of my age, the shortcomings of
my abilities and most importantly I must admit that my passion for flying has
waned. It is time to let her go to
a new home. It is time wipe my
eyes and say farewell to the one who challenged my skills, my emotions and my
checkbook.
Farewell November Niner Eight Kilo Papa
