This is a photo of Flyer, eleven years ago, today.

We would often walk next door to the high school to relax in the shade of the small grove of trees out front beside the parking lot. I’d sit to read or write on a notepad while at the same time, throwing her sticks to fetch. After she tired of the game, she’d lay down close by to observe traffic on Shroyer Road and passersby.

Flyer’s health, which had been up and down for several years, was sliding downward and at the time of this photo, she had one month remaining.

Those last weeks, I would find her staring at me and it was a different gaze than I had witnessed for those past thirteen years. A friend suggested she was saying “thank you.”

Flyer and I were together for thirteen years and she was a wonderful “mamma” to the first four sons.