“STOP THE TRUCK!” my wife screamed.

She scared the stuffing out of me. I slammed the brakes and nearly swerved into the ditch. I came to a stop in the middle of a cattle pasture.

“A rainbow!” she said, staring at a giant arch of color. “Can you BELIEVE it?”

I could believe a lot of things, but I wasn’t in the mood to squeeze out a kidney stone over a rainbow.

This is because only few days earlier, our vacation had been full of thunderstorms and sadness. Jamie’s father had just died—she was a wreck. And on top of everything else, it had been raining.

All week, we’d stayed inside the condo playing five-card draw, using Cheetohs for poker chips, watching the rain.

So, we ended our trip early and left for home. And as fate would have it, as soon as we traveled three miles outside town, the weather broke. The sun busted through the clouds—it looked like God was announcing summer.

And so, there we stood, staring across ten acres of fresh Alabamian cow pies, watching moisture evaporate into color.

“Is that the tail?” she asked, pointing.

So help me God, the end of the rainbow was actually touching the grass. I didn’t know such things were possible.

Before I could say another word, she was high-stepping through the field like a track star.

“C’mon!” she hollered.

When we made it to the spot where the rainbow touched down, we marveled. My first instinct was to swipe my hand through the colors. The cows nearby watched me with big eyes while I behaved like a six-year-old.

“No pot of gold,” she said, catching her breath.

“I guess not.”

She was silent a moment, then said, “I miss Daddy.”

“I know.”

She cried.

So did I.

I’m not a particularly smart fella, but sometimes I wonder if life itself isn’t like moisture evaporating from a pasture. One minute it’s here, the next minute it’s gone. And in this process, there doesn’t seem to be a single thing we can do about it except cry.

Because often, life hurts like hell. Other times, it doesn’t. Sometimes it only hurts like heck. Even so, life is big fun.

Because if you’re fortunate enough to love unique people who light up the sky, it’ll change you. You can waltz right up to them and take in their colors up-close. Even if only for a few moments.

But you’d better get moving.

Rainbows don’t live long.