Delicate Life

I heard the bang and knew what had happened even before I saw you. I ran to find you but it was too late. It’s my fault for not treating these high picture windows to make them safe for you.

I held your warm, soft, delicate body and marveled at how different it is from my own. It felt like a privilege to be so close, I wanted to hold you longer. As I observed you, I wondered how you had observed our world. I could learn everything about you and still I’d never know what it was to be you.

I wondered whether we had met before; had you visited when I’ve often thrown seeds? I wondered so much about your life and whether you had a mate or a nest full of eggs waiting for you. Perhaps you were finding food for your hatchlings.

I thought of the Palestinians whose cries and empty bellies remain neglected while their beloveds are killed seeking morsels of nourishment and I felt how each and every being is a whole universe to someone else, how each and every life matters if only we are willing to look and feel. Have mercy, I begged to the hardened hearts. For “love is the practice of taking an interest in the aliveness of others,” as biologist and ecophilosopher Andreas Weber unforgettably captured it. I think, too, it is the practice of taking an interest in the dying of others.

I remembered the herd of donkeys who encircled and mourned the one who died. I remembered the elephant funerals and burial rituals. I remembered Tahlequah, the killer whale who, in 2018, carried the dead body of her newborn calf for seventeen days — over a thousand miles — through the Salish Sea, in a lonely and exquisite ceremony of grief.

And some people think that grief is not
inexplicably beautiful. But perhaps it’s because
those people (who are us people) no longer see
grieving enacted publicly as a plea for sanity,
as a way of feeding that which grants us life.

— April Tierney, from “The Progeny of Love,” a poem about Tahlequah

I walked up the street to collect the fallen pink rhododendron for your bed. Pink is my favorite color and I knew you deserved something beautiful.

Some people didn’t understand; I told them you are just as important.

I’m so sorry, little one. ♥