All during that day, strange and wonderful things happened. Roils of fish just offshore in the cold Pacific brought large numbers of sea birds, including cormorants by the hundreds. A monarch butterfly flitted its brilliant wings in the back of the canyon. As we moved from the firepit, where the first part of the service happened, and walked across to the pier, where it would conclude, a solo great blue heron landed on the pier railing, watching our progress and taking off with his own unique salute as we began to approach. Then, just as we all assembled at the end of the pier, a lone pelican skimmed over the water, coming directly toward us. And as we finished saying goodbye that late afternoon, the dying sun sent soft colors toward the south, lighting on the clear white sail of a single sailboat. Mark would have loved that! We were there because he had asked us be there: together, remembering him with gratitude, thanking God for his life and gathering strength from one another as we stepped out into a different kind of life, one without him in it.
