| "The Reunion" |
 |
| Page 15 |
| Her husband had come up the stairs from the garage carrying a brown paper sack. As he placed it on the table she had remembered the decision for take out food made earlier that day. She had never felt less like eating. Sitting down across from her, also leaving the contents of the bag untouched, he placed his car keys on the table. Her voice had broken the silence. "Where did you take him?" she had asked. Due to the nature and circumstances surrounding his death, Shoo had not been afforded a decent burial. Her husband's main objective had been to remove Shoo from the neighbor's yard and from her sight. She had looked at the man she had married with such appreciation. He had done so much to further her relationship with the little cottontail. |
| At 6 p.m. he had risen from the table, the food still untouched, and announced that he was going to go out and finish the yard work he had begun earlier that day. Alone at the table in the now empty house, she had made the decision to go outside as well. Sitting down on the back porch step she surveyed the familiar backyard. "Shoo-land", she thought aloud. She saw the evergreen trees along the back fence where she had first met the little cottontail. Her eyes travelled to the empty tire that held the teeter totter... that went in circles as well as up and down. How Shoo had loved to lie in the shade of the tire! She saw the apple tree with her lawn chair still sitting in the shade of it's branches. The robin still hopped near the garden fence and a cardinal flew in for her pre-dusk feed at the bird feeder. The wind chime rang. Rising from the step she looked out even further into the yard. This was the time of day that Shoo so often came. She half expected to see the little rabbit come running into the yard. Maybe she and her husband had been mistaken... that the rabbit lying so still in the yard next door had not been Shoo, but another. Turning, she went back into the house to get a pen and paper. Coming back outside, she sat once again on the back porch step and did what she had done so many times over the past year. She wrote a letter to her forever friend. |
| She remembered how during the winter he had shoveled a path to the apple tree so that she could feed Shoo-Fly. She remembered all the times he had raked countless numbers of leaves that had gathered beside the patio so that she and Shoo could sit comfortably together. Shoo hated the leaves! She remembered how she would look up to find him standing in the doorway, watching as she sat with the little rabbit. Such a pleased look on his face! But most of all she remembered him earlier that day bending over the small, lifeless little body between the two trees and saying those two words... "Oh, no." And then again and again... "Oh, no. Oh, no." The hurt in his voice had been obvious. He had loved the little rabbit too. |
 |
| Bunny Link Page 16 |
 |