BY CHIP WRIGHT ILLUSTRATION BY JIM CAREY My father takes his final flight “Well, it doesn’t look like I’m going to get any better.” My father was telling me what my mother already had. He was dying. It wasn’t really a surprise, at least not to me. I don’t think it was to him. His voice was weaker. He was having trouble staying awake. He’d had a stroke in 2011, but that hadn’t killed him. He’d had lung cancer that had been caught early and removed. He had made a remarkable recovery from the stroke, relearning how to walk, talk, write—even drive a bit. When he wound up back in the hospital in April with a seizure, we were told it was just a minor setback. But this time his recovery never really took root. He suffered crushing headaches. He was tired. Medicines weren’t 72 | AOPA PILOT December 2012