William

Seven years ago now we learned that our son William had been killed on this day while flying his water bomber fighting a forest fire in northern Alberta.  It never gets any easier.  But the famous poem 'High Flight' which I first read a few days after he died is how I remember Will.  He followed his dreams, and "slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings"

'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 unsurpassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee