“Once upon a time, when women were birds,
there was the simple understanding that
to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk
was to heal the world through joy.
The birds still remember
what we have forgotten,
that the world is meant to be
celebrated.”
~Terry Tempest Williams
My mother died of ovarian cancer right at or just after midnight on a Thursday. It had been a long difficult year from diagnosis to the point of departure. She was lovely--even in those days and months that took her hair and her body weight but never her smile. She looked ethereal in the last several months of her life though I know she would've preferred to forego that and look like her healthy robust self. As mentioned in other posts, we were a family involved with birds as I was growing up. Pigeons for my teenaged brothers, an amazing baby Screech owl and a dove for me, cockatiels and parakeets for my parents.
On the Friday morning after her death, I was astounded to find that the world continued as if nothing had happened. As if a huge mom-shaped hole did not exist in the universe. The family made the necessary arrangements that day and the next day, mom was buried. She had worked with teenagers at the local high school and my favorite thing about that day, the image indelibly stamped in my mind, is that of two beach cruiser bicycles parked on the sidewalk in front of the small chapel where her service was held. Those two girls had ridden their bikes to come say goodbye to her--teens who usually shy away from death and loss. It was as fine a tribute as any. The cemetery was located next to a park with a baseball field. As mom was lowered into the earth, a loud cheer rose up from a baseball game on the other side of the stone wall. At first, I was terribly annoyed that it had interrupted our solemn good-bye but then a friend, leaned and whispered in my ear that it was fitting for a woman who worked with kids in the Girls' P.E. department adding that mom would've loved it.
I showed up to my teaching job on Monday morning. I was numb with grief but driven by a need to return to duty and normalcy. Grief deferred, I suppose. I arrived early so as to make it down to my classroom, not stopping by the teacher's lounge. As I walked down the hallway, I gazed off to the right. The large grassy playground was wet with morning dew and a light blanket of leftover fog. There standing in the middle of the vibrant green expanse of grass was a stark white egret. So serene and elegantly beautiful. I smiled and said a hello to mom--surely this was a sign from a bird woman to her bird daughter.
I continued to work at that school for six more years and somehow my gaze was drawn to that spot in that field of green grass many times on many mornings. Never again did I see a white egret there, although I longed for one to appear.
All birds, especially owls and finches, figure into my sensibilities but none quite like the perfect white egret. I see them on the bluffs by the sea in Cambria and in the fields along the highway through central California. I see them and have photographed them at the bird sanctuary at Bolsa Chica Beach located just an hour south of my home. Their elegance and beauty soothe me and I treasure sighting one.
So let's celebrate birdsong at dusk and dawn and egrets and beach cruisers and loud cheers from a good play at a baseball game and to the way disparate things can intersect in our lives Here's to a mother's love and her beautiful goodbye. May we all be so blessed to experience all of that and more.
*image by Viola Loretti, from the FB page,
As She Is, March 18, 2020.
