The notes and cards had all been written, most of Richard's things had been packed away or donated, and the medical equipment returned or binned; his journals though, Mary knew she'd never part with them, even if, by the end, her husband’s strong, careless script had been reduced to a weak, barely legible scrawl.
She took the last journal he'd kept out to the back lawns, to the chair her husband had sat in until his mind and body eroded, and tried to keep her tears from marring the precious pages. A crow with a stick in its beak flitted across the lawns and alighted on the elevated platform that still had a glass jar with meat scraps at the bottom; within a few moments, the crow jabbed the stick into the jar, neatly skewered the meat, and flew off again with its prize.

**
Peter was just going to go out to see how Mary was getting on when the kitchen door flew open, she stormed in, and brandished Richard’s journal, “Did you know that crows could learn to use tools?”

Seeing Richard’s drawing of a black bird holding a stick in its beak on the journal's page, Peter shrugged a little and nodded, “Yes, of course, Richard and I discussed it years ago, before he…”

With a bitter sob, Mary threw the journal across the kitchen, “And just how many other miracles and secrets did my husband share with you, and not me?”