Cars in the night......

I knew something was wrong last night when I saw so many cars going up the hill towards our neighbor's house. D had been sick for a while now, and the outcome wasn't going to be a happy ending.

On any given night, there are no cars on the road outside, unless one of the neighbors are driving home after a late night out (which doesn't happen often). At around 10:30 last night, the first car went up the hill. Ten minutes later, another car. Half an hour later, a truck..... ten minutes later, another truck. The driveway lights were on across the road, as well as most of the lights around the house.

The neighbors here are not the sort to have company coming to their homes at such a late hour. I guessed that the unhappy ending had come for D, and we found out this morning that he had passed away in his sleep. He was a good neighbor to us, especially when we first moved up here. D had all the answers for the plumbing system, the well-water and the pumps, the property lines, the neighbors' livestock. He warned us about the coyotes and the bobcats, and told us repeatedly to buy a gun because sooner or later something would come onto our property that we would need to shoot.

The little community here called him The Mayor because he would drive his golf-cart to all the other properties, nearly every day.... saying hello, giving out eggs from his chickens, seeing what was new on the other side of the hills. This morning, I took some eggs from our own chickens and baked a coffee cake to bring to D's wife. That's what everyone does here when someone dies..... food is brought to the family.

When my husband was building our chicken coop, D came over from time to time to check on the progress. He laughed at me when I asked him if the chickens would be too cold during the winter months...... he laughed when I told him that I use thrift-shop wallpaper underneath the roosting bar, to make the coop easier to clean every morning. He told me that my chickens would be spoiled, being in such an up-town coop.

I guess we won't be seeing that golf-cart riding along the road anymore. And now, D really knows what's on the other side of the hills. He passed away in his own home, in his sleep. Honestly, we should all be so lucky.