I wrote this post a month ago, not quite sure where I was going. Was it finished? Did it need editing? Should I post it? Truth be told, "BLOG" has been on my to do list for weeks and because I want to be able to put a check next to it, here it is. Maybe there's something in here for you. Maybe not. Either way, thanks for reading.
I talk a lot to birds. Cardinals especially, twice a cooper hawk. As I think I’ve mentioned before, my mom loved cardinals - willing them to her bird feeder every day when we were kids. About ten years ago my car was dive bombed by cardinals but usually she is more subtle. Just last week a cardinal was hanging out on a fence around a dumpster. He hung around long enough for me to notice and to reset, to remember where I come from and who I am.
As for the Cooper hawk. The spring after my sister Debbie died I was working at my desk which is right by sliding doors to our deck. I looked up to see a hawk sitting on the railing. In all the years we had lived at 297, no hawks had been sighted and yet if there wasn’t glass between us I could have reached out and touched this magnificent bird. It took about a minute to make the connection, “Hey, Deb,” I said.
My mom is a cardinal, Deb definitely a hawk.
My brother has a gardenia gifted to our mother more than 40 years ago. When it blossoms we always receive a photo. My sister has a plant from my mom’s wake. She knows when it blooms something wrapped in love is about to happen. For my friend Karen it’s fireflies and for another friend, Jen, it’s dimes.
And sometimes things happen and I am left to conjure up some meaning.
A few weeks ago I was alerted there was a mass being said for my dad at St. Catherine’s, the church my parents joined when they moved to Connecticut. They have a beautiful chapel where they say weekday liturgies.
The chapel is comfortable and familiar to me - my parents renewed their wedding vows there on their 40th anniversary and when they renovated the chapel my dad made a donation in my mom’s memory that paid for the cross that sits atop it.
As I sat there waiting for mass to start I was thinking about two very dear friends. One whose dad passed away a week earlier and another whose dad had entered Hospice that afternoon. I only met Peggy’s dad a couple of times but his doppelgänger was at church - a big Irish guy with a shock of white hair sat across the aisle from me. Another man walked in and looked very similar to Jen’s dad (or at least my memory of her dad) - great goatee, dapper dresser, on the small side. A third older gentleman walked in, knocked on the altar as he passed by, did a very slow genuflect and when the entrance hymn finished he kept singing. This guy didn’t look anything like my dad but oh man, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what my dad did when he attended daily mass. I was filled with love and compassion.
(This is where I get lost a bit...)
I don’t know what it all means but I know these three men loved their families so very much. I also know the power of stories. Signs and stories. Look for them, share them.Listen to others. Keep your heart open. We are in this together.
LIFE IS RANDOM LOVE IS NOTTM
