It's too cold outside for angels to fly. (Ed Sheeran)

After the funeral, I got a flight to Philly. This all would have been much easier if I was flying myself around back then. I wasn't finished with my supervised flying hours yet. There were a few things money couldn't buy or at least a few things I respected enough to follow the rules.

I called my mother from the airport in Beulah. The whole family was waiting for me in the airport in Philadelphia: my mother, my father, Uncle Tony, Senior, and what was left of Scotch. The bubbly little blond girl in flamboyant clothes was now a shrunken stick person.

My mother held me and told me they had been watching it all on the news. They all looked at me with pity. I wished now that I had told them about my successes, it would have balanced out my failures.