Mourning Dove

The birds are acting differently lately; starting to sing and chirp, flitting and circling each other in the air and just being more visible in general. They must know something that the rest of us in Maine are only hoping will come again as we dig ourselves out from under another big snow storm that got covered with freezing rain and turned everything into an impossible ice block.

Spring, and renewed hope and rebirth. But today I am dealing with another death; our friend Reg died yesterday morning. Brain cancer beat the best again ... when it's a grade 4 it always seems to win eventually. A good friend asked me if this was giving me flashbacks. Yes, it is. And I'm grieving again for my friend, his wife, G, and his entire family that includes a ten year old spitfire of a boy.

On my early morning run today I came upon a bird kill; an explosion of feathers in the middle of the trail. No blood spots, no tracks so I suspect the predator to be the Red Tailed Hawk I've seen on several occasions in this area. I looked closely at the feathers, some kind of song bird .... and as I hovered over this mass of feathers, with the downy ones blowing away over the hard crusty snow, I heard the haunting Oo-wah-hooo, hoo-hoo of a Mourning Dove. How perfect, a Mourning Dove on this day when my tears are freezing to my cheeks. As I hunker over these Dove feathers I'm enchanted at how beautiful they are; one is small and brown with a dark eye-spot on it, another, a wing feather, is black on one side of the hard center vane and white on the other side ... the yin/yang of life.

Morning .... with the dove feathers scattered at my feet and a few in my hand ... mourning.

Jim use to hear that mournful call and say "Morning, Dove". I whispered this call to the lonesome dove calling from the tree line as the sun began to rise. I whispered to Reg to say hello to Jim for me. I whispered to my fist full of feathers how sad I was feeling with this new mourning.

Loving you all back,

Mary