Grief is a Song (a birdsong)

Following the Loss of My Father

a chipping sparrow sings to us when we were at Niagra Falls in May

The last time I saw my dad we spoke about birds. “We heard a red-eyed vireo outside,” I said to him, from the foot of his hospital bed, in the middle of his living room.

“A what?” he asked, his eyes bright, searching mine.

“A red-eyed vireo.”

He shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

“They sing all summer long,” I said. “Chunky birds with red eyes. Their song sounds like, ‘Up here. See me? Here I am. Look at me.’” I said, in my best imitation of a red-eyed vireo. He just shook his head again, eyes never leaving mine. Even now when he was a ghost of himself. Even now he enjoyed learning something new. I told him how Jeff and I had been getting into birding lately. Memorizing their songs; chasing after warblers; trying to photograph them.

I was trying to fill the space between us with words, trying not to notice his too-skinny legs, his emaciated face and arms. The wrapper of a lemon snack pie folded into the sheets.

“He won’t eat nothing,” my stepmom said, when I’d called on the way to see if we could pick up dinner. And she a good thirty to forty pounds lighter than when I’d last seen her too. I’d hugged her gently when she opened the door to us, afraid I might break her.

I hadn’t seen them for months. They were both vulnerable, but my dad, with end-stage COPD, on continuous oxygen for so long now, would never survive a respiratory infection if I carried one into them. I work at a hospital. Recently, my unit had a COVID outbreak. I still try to be careful who I breathe around.

But when I called my stepmom on Mother’s Day, she told me. “Your dad’s not doing very well,” she said. “He’s not getting out of bed anymore. He ran off his PT. And the hospice nurse. I can’t get him to stop smoking. He’s caught his nose on fire twice. He’s being very ornery.”

To say the least.

I asked if I could come and see him and she said, yes, of course, people are in and out of here all the time, come any time, he’d love to see you.

So we made plans to drive the two- and one-half hours to my hometown as soon as possible.

It wasn’t the house I grew up in, but it sat on the same plot of land, adjacent to the woods I played in as a girl. The earth here remembers the soles of my feet—grass-stained and clover-scented, hardened from running barefoot under the stars. We climbed out of our jeep to be greeted by the song of the red-eyed vireo. And I froze in place, breathing long-forgotten air, letting the soul-memories flood into me.

Up here, sang the red-eyed vireo. See me? Here I am. Look at me.

Something about the stillness of the air, the way the song floated down to me, told me. Pay attention, the voice said. I let my breath grow slow and even. I felt each second, thick—like honey. I could taste the sweet.

I didn’t know for sure. That this would be the last time I’d see him. This man with eyes like mine. I’d spent so many years of my young life being angry at him. Only the slow balm of time and my own mess of sorrows opened my eyes to all the grays. And forgiveness. I’d forgiven him long ago. Maybe we forgave each other. But there was still sorrow. And grief. And here I was, sitting at the foot of a hospital bed, television blaring, scent of cigarette smoke lingering, the dog licking my husband’s toes as he sits on the couch, just out of my dad’s line of vision.

And a red-eyed vireo singing in the forest I played in as a girl. My two worlds colliding.

We talk for almost half an hour, which is a lot for a man whose every inhale is a labor. I make the mindless chatter. And I am that little girl again. The one who rushed into his arms when he came home from work. The one who tried so desperately to win his approval and affection. The one with his eyes, his freckles. Flashes of memory. A smell. A glimpse of how it could have been … regret. But for those moments, it all falls away. And I am his little girl.

We step outside to give him a moment of privacy. He is tired and I know we need to let him rest.

“Come back in before you go,” he says.

In the front yard, surrounded by birdsong, I catch a glimpse of my brother over the hill, at his place. I yell down to him and he runs up, shirtless. I hug his sweaty neck. One of my little sister’s sons is with him, and his youngest son too, so I get more boy hugs. An eastern towhee sings unseen somewhere. My brother’s grown-up son, who lives across the road, wanders over with his two little girls. They have a dance recital later in the evening and are wearing stage makeup. I ask the littlest one to give me a twirl. She does, smiling shyly.

We are talking about how dad is doing when my niece and her family pull up in the new driveway (“The neighbor made it for us,” my stepmom tells me. “So the ambulance can pull right up to the door to get your dad.”). They’re in two different cars—she and her two sons, her husband and two of his grown-size kids.

My niece has some new tattoos since I saw her last and I want to touch them, read her ink like a story; but I just wrap my arms around her instead. I’m a little bit crazy-in-love with my nieces and nephews because they were the first ones to show my heart baby-love. I’ll never forget visiting my nephew in the hospital right after he was born. I fell so hard. Every time I look at his handsome face now, I see that blue-eyed babe that captured my heart.

So when my niece runs down to the basement to get her two ball pythons to show me, I let my first love overcome my fear. “I’m not going to hold them,” I call after her, as she ducks inside.

I watch as she and her stepdaughter let the snakes twine around their arms and shoulders, my niece scratching the nose of one to help rid it of excess skin it’s been trying to shed. Her husband tells me the story of the snakes and how they came to fall in love with them. He’s wearing some kind of handgun strapped across his chest, but I barely notice.

None of this feels strange to me, but my husband is quiet. How can I explain? How right it feels to be with the people who have known me from the beginning? As far away as my middle-class life is from this life on the hollow where I was planted, I think I will always feel most like my true self when I am with them.

Standing in the sunshine of my youth, hugged by birdsong and whispering leaves, love was thick, an invisible thread twining all of our hearts into one. Maybe there are no two lives. It’s always been one.

A week and a half later, he was gone.

And even though we knew it was coming, the reality of it, the grief, takes me by surprise. I cannot stop thinking about his blue gaze, knit together with mine. How his eyes held mine, almost searching—a question. What was he asking me? Do I love him? Do I forgive? Or maybe he was telling me the same. That he forgives me. That he loves me. He always has. Through all the ups and downs and disappointments and mistakes we both made.

There remain so many unsaid things, so many questions. I’ve been re-listening to an interview with the clinical social worker, Pauline Boss, in which she talks about ambiguous loss, or complicated grief. She says,

I think “closure,” though, is a perfectly good word for real estate and business deals … But “closure” is a terrible word in human relationships. Once you’ve become attached to somebody, love them, care about them — when they’re lost, you still care about them. It’s different. It’s a different dimension. But you can’t just turn it off. And we look around down the street from me — there’s a Thai restaurant where there’s a plate of fresh food in the window every day for their ancestors. Are they pathological? No. That’s a cultural way to remember your ancestors. Somehow, in our society, we’ve decided, once someone is dead, you have to close the door. But we now know that people live with grief. They don’t have to get over it. It’s perfectly fine. I’m not talking about obsession, but just remembering.

I think it was Mary Oliver who said, “Things take the time they take.” Sometimes forever.

That day when I saw my father for the last time, when we stepped out of the jeep into the song of the red-eyed vireo, I couldn’t help wondering how many other songs I had missed over the slow years of my life. How many times had I missed the beautiful because I was focusing on the broken?

In that same interview, Pauline Boss said, “Sadness is treated with human connection.” My dad asked for no services. He chose to leave this world the way he tried to live in it—quiet, no fuss, no trouble. We wait for his ashes, but there was no plan for goodbyes.

So we all gathered at my sister’s. The people he loved most drifting through the grass, eating together, leaning on each other. I watched my grown son play with his cousins—corn hole, wiffle ball—laughing together, remembering. I had some kitchen time with my sister, held babies—jostling them as they cried. I watched my mom hug my stepmom—a long, tight hug that made my eyes sting. I talked peace with my brothers, kissed my nephew on the top of his head. I let my spirit-thoughts run wild—all the memories and laughter and tears mingling in my mind.

Love is beautiful and messy and heartbreakingly hard at times. We are learning a new way of being in the world. One without our father. But I am so grateful for the love he gave us over the years. I carry it with me now, like birdsong in my heart.

Up here. See me? Here I am. Look at me.