The eighteen months are still eighteen months I don’t get back.

But a person doesn’t have to stay a prisoner of grief, and I had been one long enough.

I stood at the edge of the airfield that evening and watched one of our training jets lift off into a clean, going-gold sky, wheels folding up, nose reaching for altitude, and I followed it up out of habit and love.

For the first time in longer than I could measure, I didn’t see a ghost up there in the clouds.

I saw the students who’d be flying it next year, and the people they’d carry, and the small nods they’d give to frightened strangers without ever knowing it mattered.