Vapour Trails

For most widows there are small triggers in everyday life that set off those tender memories that often stop you in your tracks.

As ex-RCAF, a vapour trail does the same thing for me.

The life of the wife of an Airman is perhaps a little different than most, and I am not sure if I would want to live it over again. But there is no doubt it was at times exciting, because of course it was all about airplanes.

My husband was not a pilot…he “flew a desk,” or in other words he worked in accounts. He had a mind like a steel trap when it came to figures and he loved airplanes.  It was probably one of the reasons when back in civilian life, he bought a travel agency.  He knew travel was mostly about flying.

I only once remember being a bit nervous on an airplane.  It happened in Russia.  I don’t know what kind of airplanes the pilot had taken his training on, but even I knew that you just don’t fly a big airplane like that!  On another occasion the wheels of the aircraft wouldn’t come down…we circled the airport for 10 minutes and they finally released.  It was odd as I wasn’t concerned a bit…I’d had a full life, but I felt badly for a young lady I knew who was on the same flight…she still had a lot of living to do…and today we are both alive and well.

I stood in the front window this morning and watched this tiny dot in the east get larger and finally take on a meteor-type tail and flow across the blue of the Alberta sky.  It was like God had taken a paint brush and dipped it in white ink.  As it got closer it became larger and you could actually see the airplane itself, then gradually it became smaller, the airplane no longer visible and just the vapour trail left in the sky…then it was gone.

It kind of mirrored my husband’s life and each one of ours.  We appear as tiny individuals, grow, make our mark and are recognized for what we are, then diminish bit by bit, leaving only a vapour trail for a time, and then disappearing.

But for a while we are part of God’s world and He has a task for us to do here and a place for us after our flight is done.  For a short space of time, we too will make a vapour trail in this world of ours, then, we will fade and find ourselves in another time and space…safe and sound in His heavenly airport.

Image: By Pieter van Marion from Netherlands (Vapor trail Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons