She lay in my hands, my daughter's parakeet. She was dying and I didn't want her to die alone so I held her in my hands and took her outside to the trees and sunshine. I looked at her, helplessly wishing I could ease her transition into whatever was beyond this place, looking for a clue or sign of something showing me what is beyond death.
This was the second parakeet that I had held in my hands as it died. I was 9 or 10 when my own bird caught a cold and became ill very fast. I remember my dad was out mowing the lawn when I ran to him with my parakeet dead in my hands. I was crying and Dad hugged me tightly; when I looked up at him he had tears in his eyes.
I remember thinking as a child how wonderful my dad was to be able to cry over a parakeet. Now that I am older and have children of my own, I realize that he probably was crying more for the pain I was feeling. It always hurts more when your children are suffering.
I wasn't there when my dad died. I had seen him two weeks earlier; he weighed around 90 pounds by then. We were left in a room alone at that time. We'd had some difficult times when I was growing up. He drank too much. This was my time to get anything off my chest I needed to say. But I just sat there and looked at him.
What would be the point of speaking my anger, my pain? It would only be for my own relief. Sitting there I knew he had thought of all the mistakes he'd made and the pain he had caused. I felt compassion for him, knowing the decisions we make in life are not always the right ones, and how we sometimes wish we could go back and take a different path.
I realized also how we look at our parents as invincible beings, not recognizing that they once were kids, teenagers and then adults like us, stumbling through life and doing their best with the stones in their path.
One wrong turn is all it takes
and there ain't many signs --
you only get a few breaks.
Some get more. Some get less.
One wrong turn leads to the next.
The days go slow and the years go fast.
The future you look for is soon the past.
You seldom end up where you thought you would.
One wrong turn can change it all for good.
--Greg Brown
I hugged my dad when I left and told him that I loved him. I wanted to ask if he was scared, and if he could, would he please come and see me after he died and tell me what it was like. But I felt foolish even thinking of asking those questions. Two weeks later during the day the phone rang and I froze in my seat. Somehow I knew that was the call; he had died.
For years after his death I keep waiting for him to come to me somehow, to tell me where he was and if he loved me even during those difficult times in our lives. He never showed up, until I realized holding that dying little bird in my hands and looking up seeing those tears in my father's eyes that my questions had been answered: he had always loved me and has never left my side.
Jill Worden lives near Lake Ann. Married and the mother of three, she writes occasionally about her experiences as a survivor of breast cancer. She can be reached care of the Record-Eagle or at keepgoing2day@yahoo.com.
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