Skywatch Friday: "O! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth..."

The deadline for my book manuscript gets ever closer, and I'm just about crazy with trying to get it all done. But I will. Apologies to those whose blogs I haven't been able to visit lately--things will return to what passes for normal in my world by mid July. I hope.

Meanwhile, today, June 11, is a bittersweet day for our family; five years ago, my father, a retired Air Force and commercial airline pilot, 'slipped the surly bonds of earth', as John Magee wrote in his poem 'High Flight', after a five-year battle with Alzheimers disease. Naturally, we miss him every day, although we feel his presence around us in different ways, my mother, my sister and I. I feel even a little more elegaic than usual this year because we just said goodbye to his oldest sister with the same damn disease. So I look around at my garden full of forget-me-nots, and plant trees & shrubs in memory of people we've lost, and donate to the Alzheimer's Society, in honour of my father. And of my aunt. And many, many others.

My dad was a gardener too. As was his father, and his mother, and my mother, and her parents. As am I, and my sister. And maybe, one day, my son too. Hence the shot of the sky, one of the places Dad was most happy, and of the forget-me-nots, for this late spring Skywatch Friday. Thank you to all of you already who have left such kind, supportive notes. Your friendship across the miles sweetens even a most bitter sorrow.