– Author Unknown
After dinner tonight Bella came into my office and sat next to me. I began stroking the silky fur on her head and talking to her in soft tones about nothing in particular, calling her, as I often did, "my sweetest girl". She looked up at me with her imperfect brown eyes, one clear, one cloudy. From my western facing office window I noticed a sunset blooming and suggested to her that we go watch the light.
We sat on our front porch and looked out at the smear of blues, yellows and oranges spreading across the western sky. Bella sat to my left, her hind end flush against my side. I can't say whether Bella was watching the psychedelic sky or was just pointing her muzzle into the air to savor the scent of the fresh chicken poop our hay guy had spread on the pastures over the weekend to give our grass a boost. It didn't matter, I was enjoying the moment and slowly stroked her head and neck. I dipped my hand to her throat to see if the deadly growths were still there.
The sky caught fire in front of us and the living colors that stretched for miles were magnificent, morphing in real time before our eyes. I knew full well that the show wouldn't last long...that this light, that had traveled millions of miles to arrive at this instant, would soon slip away, never to return. The best I could do would be to enjoy it while it was there and to do my best to remember the moment.
Before it died out and the sky turned ashen, the colors intensified one last time and spread across most of the sky. The yellow shifted to orange, the orange to red, the red to maroon. We listened to a flock of roosting doves noisily clatter their wings against the dry leaves in the magnolia tree next to the house. Bella's ears lifted and her head turned slightly to the left to monitor a truck going up our road. A pair of doves circled around the upper pasture and disappeared over our front woods. The temperature dropped and I pulled Bella closer.
Within minutes the colors in the sky began to slowly recede and soften, losing their intensity. Cloud after cloud shifted from pale blue and orange to gray; the life in the sky seemed to drain away as the brilliant color shifted to monochrome. The sky began its relentless transition from light to dark. It was a fitting way to celebrate the end of a great day, her beautiful life and her incredible connection to our family's lives.
It was a perfect sunset.
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