In the Back Yard, in Autumn

Cookie and I spent some time in the back yard, she supervising my leaf and garden cleanup from the vantage of the picnic table. She and I haven’t spent too much time out there since Namir has been gone; she didn’t seem to have the heart for it, nor did I.

But time passes, and now that the season has changed it’s put a bit of a distance to our loss and let our memories come forth, and we remembered him and his antics, imagining what he’d be doing on a lovely day like this. Neither Cookie nor I have sat at the picnic table where the three of us spent many mornings, but this was a good day to return.

Cookie really doesn’t like to have her picture taken, and when she sees the camera come out she looks everywhere but at me. However, in this one moment she looked straight at me and a sunbeam passed down through the thinning tree tops, catching the slight haze in the autumn air. He was with us, I think, in this beam of sunlight, the three of us together again.