I end the day with a bit of watering…..summer is coming and the desert is already thirsty, almost as if it’s in anticipation of scorching relentless merciless rays it drinks. I watch the ground soak it in and it makes me thirsty too, so I pause to tilt back the Dasani. I drink it in as greedily as the plants. I guess this is what you call puttering in the yard. And it’s a good way to end the day.

I go in and pull shades up to let a bit of the sunset in and turn on the evening lights and then I go back outside and watch the birds do their nightly crisscrossing to and fro across the sky. Silently the sky speaks volumes.

I sit and watch the show and I can’t seem to stop.

A day ends, a life ends, both quietly, both almost without notice.

One last glory in the sky, one breath you’re there, the next you’re gone. I marvel at how quickly the earth swallows up our memory.

Almost as easy as crashing waves washing away the castle you just spent an hour building.

Some go with fanfare, headlines, processions and some go quietly but none go unnoticed by God. Ever.

I watch the sky bleach color, first gray and now one last splash of pink before darkness swallows it up. The birds are silent now. They know the proper way to bring an evening in. I wish I could see them tucked in their boughs. Not for the first time, I wonder if any of them lose their balance and plummet to the ground as they drift off to sleep, like I do sometimes sitting upright.

I close the cover of my Ipad as well as my eyes and say a prayer for all the heartache in the world, for loved ones near and far. It’s what I do when I can’t do enough.

It’s my benediction, my way of honoring a man I knew for twenty-four years. A man who liked to wear cowboy boots and stetson hats once upon a time, and was known to have a temper, but could fix anything as long as he had a can of WD40. And he always had several.

And who also was known to have a soft heart when you least expected it.