Last weekend two things made me sad.  I heard that Neil Armstrong died and so did one of my hummingbirds.  Katie and I were sitting on the deck reading a book.  Well.  I was reading and she was napping.  The hummingbirds were buzzing around, chasing each other away from the feeder.  A female hovered right in front of my face and stared at me for a bit.  I wasn’t sure how many hummers we had, they moved so fast; zipping through the trees, over the house, back again to the feeder.

When I got up to go back into the house Katie sniffed at what I thought was a leaf on the deck, but wasn’t particularly interested.  I glanced over at the leaf and realized with a breaking heart that it was one of my hummingbirds.  There was a tiny spot on the window, and the poor bird was lying dead on the deck.   I was overwhelmed with grief out of proportion to my actual loss.  I love watching my hummers at the feeder.  They are there because I put the feeder there.  This poor little female was dead because I put the feeder there.

I picked her up and stroked her soft feathers.  She weighed nothing at all.  But she was beautiful.  The sun made her feathers glow, and I took her down the hill and put her on a nest of thistle fluff at the base of an oak tree along with a flower from the garden we passed.  I wanted her feathers to glow with the last rays of the sun just a little longer.  One last time.

I cried the whole time I mowed the yard.

When the sun slipped behind the trees I buried her, along with some flower petals and a bit of goldenrod, beneath our butterfly bush.  That evening I sent her on her way and hoped she and Mr. Armstrong were both flying over the moon.  The next day a male and a female hummingbird visited the feeder.  I wonder if they miss her.  I do.

Tonight as I watched the full moon swing up into the night sky I thought of them both.  And I winked, just the way his family asked us to.  God speed to you both Neil and my little one.  God speed.