A PASSING MOOD (PDF-1029)

My family loves Autumn. I acknowledge it too, but for me there is also something desperate about the fall season, all the bright days pointing away from summer and toward the solstice in December; that is the moment I start to look for spring, much to my wife’s shaking of her head. I was born a summer baby, on the hottest day in summer my mom said. I guess I am a spring and summer soul. Some like it hot. I am a bit melancholy or perhaps it is just the passing of our dog Kota that lingers. Kota passed away quietly Sunday afternoon, a prince to the end. My wife tells me he was sitting out in the yard where she had carefully helped him stand up to pee. When he flopped back down, Margaret tells me he raised his nose up to the sky, sniffed the air, and then lay down again and his poor heart gave out. We were with him in the last moments. It was a peaceful death.