It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.
The game begins in the Spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the Summer, filling the afternoons and evenings. And then, as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the Fall alone. You count on it, rely on it, to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it the most, it stops. Today, October 2nd, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.