Part 2
She looked at her friend sitting beside her and her heart filled with an incredible joy!
How many times after his death had she sat in this very yard, hoping for just a glimpse of him, even if only in spirit?
And, how impossible had it been for her heart to comprehend the words "never again"...
("The saddest words to fall from my pen are the words spoken softly, "Never again")..
a poem she had begun but had been unable to complete, finding that she could not write what she culd not accept.
Shoo-Fly stretched beside her.
She wondered. Had she not been able to accept the words because deep down inside she had known that the words weren't true?
Had spirit known what her mind had not...
that one day she would see her friend again?
Had the refusal to accept the finality of death had come from a real inner knowledge and had not been just the hopeless denail she had thought it to be?
She looked at her little friend beside her once again and she wondered.
Resting her elbow on her knee and her chin on her palm she thought about the events of the day.
Everything within and without the house had been the same as when she had been with Shoo-Fly right before his death.
Not after.
It was almost as if time had frozen at 3 p.m. that Mother's Day and she was picking up right where she had left off.
An example would be the treats on the table lying right where she had put them, bag open, as she waited fr her friend to come into the yard.
now, her mind attempted to grasp, he had finished the treats in the bag but over thirty years later!
She looked at the little rabbit who appeared to be once again listening to the sounds in the distance.
Rising from the step she walked out on the patio and stood on tip toe still endeavoring to discover the source of the sounds.
Shoo-Fly hopped to where she stood, ears at attention.
"Where are those voices coming from, Shoo?" she asked.
Stepping off the patio, she walked to the apple tree with Shoo-Fly close at her heels.
Coming to the lawn chair she rested her hand lightly on it's green padded back.
The catalogue lying across the center of the chair still displayed the page she had been reading that Mothers Day so long ago before she had gone to look for Shoo-Fly.
On the upturned page, her eyes met the picture of the candle sconce she had ordered later that day in memory of Shoo.
Again she listened intently.
Such joyful voices! Even happy shouts! But she did not see a soul.
Sighing she turned to go back to the porch. She looked at Shoo still by the tree.
"Shoo", she began but then stopped.
Something in the rabbit's gaze rewarded her full attention.
Turning to see what had so intently caught the little cottontail's attention, she gasped in complete amazement.
There, in the center of the yard, it had begun to rain, but not rain in drops of water, but in droplets of color.
She backed from the sight and knelt down beside Shoo.
"What on earth..." she began.
Blue, indigo, violet...the drops fell, each forming it's own individual part of what was appearing to be...a bridge.
A rainbow bridge!
She looked into the sky. The rainbow she had been seeing throughout this unusual day, beginning as she sat in the old rocker in her small apartment,
was not present.
She looked at the arch still forming.
She could not see the other end of the bridge but she knew that it must end somewhere.
The colors stopped falling, evidently their mission complete.
So beautiful, she thought of the many colored arc!
So beautiful!
Quietly, reverently, she rose to her feet looking at the base.
The colors shimmered upon the grass.
She touched a branch from the apple tree sending a cascade of apple blossoms to the ground. Slowly she walked toward the bridge with Shoo-Fly hopping beside her.
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