Final flight

 My mother and I both had doctor's appointments on the same day and I decided to fly us to the big city in the Twin Beech as a sort of sentimental gesture.  I'm probably not going to bother with renewing the annual, too inconvenient to have it done and not worth the expense now that I have the King Air, so this would be one of the last times I'd fly it, maybe the last.

The old plane has a lot of memories for me.  My grandfather, that stern old naval aviator who began his career flying F3F biplane fighters and ended it flying F8E supersonic jet fighters, taught me multi-engine and instrument flying in it when I was in high school.  In college during summer, I flew it to Alaska to fly Part 135. I flew with my dad across the Atlantic Ocean in it.  I flew it...well, a lot.  My dad bequeathed it to me in his will. I'll never sell it.  But I can't justify keeping it in flying condition. 

My mother didn't say much as we flew along, just looked at the passing view.  I thought about all the people who had flown in this airplane over the years, my grandparents, now long gone, as well as uncles and aunts, great uncles and aunts, assorted cousins, nephews and nieces, my own children, my mother, of course, my father, my husband, friends, lots of ranch hands and assorted paying and non-paying passengers and who knows who else in decades before I was born.  My grandfather bought the plane in 1966, so it's been in the family for 60 years.  Before he bought it, it had been, as I recall, an executive transport and then an air ambulance. 

My mom dozed off after a while, and glancing over at where she sat in the co-pilot's seat, if I let my eyes drift out of focus, I could see my dad sitting there giving me refresher training or filling out a dead reckoning plot, just in case all the electronic gadgets went kerflooie. I thought about all the ghosts that must be riding with me each time I fly the old plane. That's why I'll never sell it.  There are scuffs and scratches made by people I knew and talked to and were an accepted and, I thought, eternal part of my life who are no longer alive, have not been for years, even decades.  But there that scratch is, that worn spot, just as if they had made it yesterday and I can conjure them in my mind as clearly as ever, hear them talking, remember that time when we....

So as long as I keep this airplane, even if I never fly it again, I can climb aboard and sit where they sat, touch that worn spot on the cockpit dash by the radio their hand made over the years. There are probably stray cookie crumbs they dropped while eating a snack on a long flight still hidden in crevices and crannies. My dad said I talked to the airplane, thought of it as alive.  Well, not quite.  I think I was talking to all the memories left by all the people who have flown in it.  Hello, airplane, hello dad, hello gramps, hello, hello all you all, hello.  You're still here for me. You always will be as long as I am.  And once I am not, I will join you as a memory in someone else's mind. The fading fate of us all.