The Birds May . . . Or May Not . . . Have Been There

Because death is a weird thing, things are going to get a little weird here.  Willie and I had a pretty weird phone conversation - 38 minutes, very weird for two guys who are usually falling all over each other trying to get off the phone.  He's always saying: "I'm pulling up to an account here so I'm going to let you go" which is a totally transparent lie seeing as it's coming from a guy who tells me repeatedly how little he works.  It's better, I guess, than me saying: "Are we about done here?" which I am not making up and which is blunt way past the point of politeness.

I don't believe either of us is what you would call traditionally religious.  Yet there we were talking about my father dying and his brother dying not long before that and all of the pretty weird shit that may or may not have been happening.  We wondered whether the shit was indeed weird or was it shit that was normal, shit that we bent into weird shapes because we wanted it to mean something, you know?  You probably don't know.  I don't know, that's for sure.

I mentioned that my dad liked to sit next to a picture window with a pair of binoculars and a bird book.  The last few hours of his life he kept mentioning, chuckling, with a look of wonder and surprise, that there were flocks of birds congregating in the corner of the hospital room.  "Where are all of those birds coming from?" he'd ask.  At first I'd tell him that they're were no birds in the room, eventually deciding that the best course of action was simply to agree with him.  "Unbelievable, right, dad?" I'd say.  One night I came in and the nurse said that he was pestering her for some birdseed, worried that they weren't getting anything to eat.

The next day, after he had died, I was cleaning out the little storage closet they had off the side of their balcony - my folks, not the birds - and I found a couple of inches of old hummingbird sugar-water.  I poured it in the feeder they had hanging on the deck.  I hate to waste anything even though I knew that hummers usually turn their beaks up at nectar that is older than a few weeks. Bam, boom, a hummingbird was right there at the feeder.

I told Willie: "Could that have been my mom stopping by, saying goodbye?"  

He didn't laugh.  He shared a story about seeing a vapor or form or pillar of smoke rise from his father when he died.  Why not? I thought.  Why couldn't that happen?  Sounds weird but my mom never took the form of a hummingbird when I was alive, and I had just suggested that possibility.

I made my way back home to Vacation City.  The first morning I got up and started my Quiet Time.  We have some doves in the neighborhood that we can hear tooting their mournful song from time to time.  I swear that they must have been sitting right on top of my chimney because the hooting came down into the house as if it was amplified.  I could hardly hear myself think, and I think real loud.

I can't see very well but have a robust sense of hearing.  Maybe I can hear stuff on a level that Willie can't.  Maybe he has a heightened sense of vision and can see things that are invisible to me.  Maybe that form was right there for anyone to see - he picked it up, I couldn't.

I  did a little research on bird mythology.  Here's what I found. . . 

Birds assume a variety of roles in mythology and religion. They play a central part in some creation myths and frequently appear as messengers of the deities. They are often associated with the journey of the human soul after death.  Many myths have linked birds to the arrival of life or death.  With their power of flight, these winged creatures were seen as carriers or symbols of the human soul, or as the soul itself, flying heavenward after a person died. A bird may represent both the soul of the dead and a deity at the same time.

The flight of the soul - numerous myths have linked birds to the journeys undertaken by human souls after death.  Sometimes a bird acts as a guide in the afterlife.  In Syria, figures of eagles on tombs represent the guides that lead souls to heaven.  The soul guide in Jewish tradition is a dove.  In some cultures, it was thought that the soul, once freed from the body, took the form of a bird.  The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul, the ba, could leave the dead body in the form of a bird, often a hawk.  They built their graves and tombs with narrow shafts leading to the open air so that these birds could fly in and out, keeping watch on the body.  The feather cloaks that Central American and Mexican priests and kings wore may have been connected to the idea of a soul journey.

The Greeks and Celts thought that the dead could reappear as birds.  The Sumerians of the ancient Near East believed that the dead existed as birds in the underworld.  According to Islamic tradition, all dead souls remain in the form of birds until Judgment Day, while in Christian tradition, the gentle dove became a symbol of the immortal soul ascending to heaven.  Birds also appear in Hindu mythology as symbols of the soul or as forms taken by the soul between earthly lives.  The connection between birds and souls is sometimes reflected in language.  A Turkish saying describes somebody's death as "His soul bird has flown away."