Death and Life

All on the same day

A bird died in my hands yesterday morning. 

It was a young bird, still with soft fuzz indicating wings not fully developed. I can only imagine it was a too early attempt at flight that sent him crashing down into our backyard. I happened to be out with the dogs and saw the commotion of his fall near the stump of an old tree. Bodhi, our 1 ½ year old pup, quickly pounced at him before I could realize what was going on and tell him to leave it. The young bird lay there motionless at first, then wriggled enough to show it was still alive. 

Good. 

I can help. I can get him to safety. But as I got closer, I noticed blood dripping lightly from his beak. 

Not good. 

I immediately picked him up and cupped him gently in the palms of my hands. Though it seemed apparent that his neck was broken, I thought he still might have a chance. Despite the blood that continued to drip out of his beak and onto my hands, I had hope. Hope that my warm caress, the compassion and the love that I was giving him could help rejuvenate him. Within seconds though, life left his precious little body.  

Definitely not good.

There I stood, with a lifeless body in my hands. I didn’t know what to do. I walked towards the house and called for my husband. He came out and that’s when the tears started flowing. In fact, I’ve been crying on and off every time I think about it. Grief and sadness came pouring out of me. I felt like the 10 year old girl of my past, crying at the sight of the lifeless body of our family dog laying by the side of the road after being hit by a car. My heart ached, deeply ached. Eventually, I decided to lay the young bird back near where he fell, safely behind a fence out of dog’s reach. I don’t know if birds are capable of mourning, I mean there are mourning doves in fact, but I didn’t want to take that opportunity away from his momma in case she could. 

It’s probably of no surprise that this put a damper on my morning. I was tempted to cancel all my plans and instead sulk in sadness and anger. In the past, I would have bottled up these emotions and avoided experiencing them in any manner. This would have led to any/all of the following: being impatient with my husband and starting a fight, incessant yelling at the dogs for simply behaving as dogs, skipping the gym to sulk on the couch, and eating and drinking in excess to ‘cope’ with my feelings.

Thankfully, the efforts I’ve made over the past 6+ years to cultivate mindfulness, patience, kindness and compassion, to myself and others, have taught me much healthier ways to process these feelings and emotions. I openly cried (still crying)…alot.  I allowed my husband to hold me as I shared the deep sadness that I felt. I took deep breaths to help calm myself down. I started to shift towards knowing that this little birdy literally died being held in love and compassion. I felt gratitude for making the choice 4 years ago to live my life in a way that does no harm (ahimsa) to all beings, human or animal. I moved towards accepting that death is a part of life. I didn’t cancel my plans. I went to the gym. I made a healthy meal. I went to visit my grandson and daughter-in-law.

And that’s where I was brought back to realizing how beautiful and precious life can be in this moment. The sadness of a broken heart quickly shifted to the joy of a melting heart as my grandson walked towards me with a smile and open arms for our first of many hugs of the day. While I spent the morning experiencing the sorrow of death, I was now witness to the fullness of life. Watching his almost-one-year-old self exploring the playground, laughing, smiling, crying, walking, crawling, snacking, sharing and waving was a perfect demonstration of living life fully. He reminds me that I want to live my day-to-day life, not as if it’s my last day, but as if I’m experiencing it for the first time. 

In an instant, life can be over. Or maybe, like me, you might have been told you have x amount of time to live. The reality is that we don’t know when our time will come, but it will come. We shouldn’t fear it. In fact, I think we should plan for it, talk about it, accept it and embrace it. I promise I’ll have much more to say about this in a future post. But for now, I’ll leave you with this question:

What’s the next thing I can do or experience as if it was the first time?

Would love for you to share your thoughts and experience in the comments.

Thanks as always for your love and support. Though I don’t write as often as I’d like, this blog brings me such joy and allows me to express myself in a way that I didn’t know I could. Also, it’s quite a healing process for me and just writing this post, with all the tears, has allowed me to truly grieve for my birdy friend. Rest in peace little buddy. 

With love and gratitude,

Jess