Sky Spy, Memoirs of a U-2 Pilot

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To those who made this idea a reality:

Pam Bronson, Dillon Carter, and especially Debra Carter.

The events in this book are true. Many of the names have been changed to protect their privacy or for national security reasons.

The frail, old priest bent down close to the bed-ridden woman. He tenderly caressed her forehead as he administered the last rites of the Catholic Church. He placed a small piece of the Eucharistic host in her mouth but she was unable to swallow it. I filled a cup with water from the bathroom sink and held my mother’s head as she tried to sip the water.

My mother has advanced Alzheimer’s disease and she has withered away to a mere shadow of her former self. Last month she fell and fractured her right hip. I studied her shrunken face as she lay in bed at the nursing home and my thoughts travelled back in time. This was the woman who had given me life and inspired my life. I was the last one she knew. Everyone else had faded from her mind. In time, she also forgot who I was. She hadn’t spoken a meaningful word to me in three months and now she lay before me barely clinging to life. When the priest finished his blessing, I bent over my mom, Sally Carter, to stroke her hair and say goodbye. As I did so, she opened her eyes, looked into mine, and said “Thank You.” Once again, my mother had amazed me. I shouldn’t have been surprised; she had been amazing me my entire life.

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