Until today.

The robin landed unusually close as I stood outside, and she** didn’t fly away when I approached. Rather, she hopped along, signaling an inability to fly.

Injured foot, or an injured wing, perhaps; I followed her quietly around the front garden, considering how I might help. Either of these possibilities, if YouTube couldn’t show me how, then I’d take her to a veterinarian.

Until today, I’d never held a bird, but rather only watched as good people in documentaries taught me how.

I asked mum to keep an eye on my robin while I grabbed gloves. I’d tried to hold her without gloves, but my body rejected the feeling of her wings’ press against my hands, seeking leave, while I denied it. Psychologically, and because of my own violent reaction to the feeling of being caged even when in the gentlest hands, I needed a barrier as I obstructed freedom to any part of creation. (Make of that what you will, pop-psychologists.)

I was hesitant. My heart was fkng frantic, I couldn’t calm it. Not because it was a first, but because birds are so small and fragile, and though my robin didn’t put up any sort of real fight, I was worried I’d hold on too tightly. This, a thing we do when maybe we care too much, while forgetting that nothing is ours even when given freely. (It is not lost on me that I type this while I also claim her as “my” robin.)

I didn’t hold on too tightly, alhamduliLah. If you’re curious to know what it felt like to carry her, it was like carrying several empty eggshells.

Tired. My robin felt tired.

My gloved hands, barrier protected, could still read resignation and exhaustion.

I asked Momma to bring over some water and so I slowly placed the very end of my robin’s beak into the cup so she might drink. Very very slowly, I think maybe she did. I couldn’t tell if she was taking small gulps, or just moving her beak.

After a few moments, she began opening her beak a little more, and because she wasn’t trying to fly away, I instantly thought This is what happens when someone is dying – they have one final burst of life, before leaving.

Which is exactly what happened.

Momma said it first – She’s dying. That’s why she can’t fly. She came here to die.

One moment, I felt her heart beating, and then I didn’t. Her small and beautiful head suddenly softer along the neck, I began to sob. I sat in the garden and sobbed, holding the little robin in both hands trying to understand but absolutely incapable of anything but splitting my body at the seams.

Until today, I’d never felt a life leave a body.

I struggle still to wrap my mind around death. We are here; we are not. I don’t understand it, nor do I believe that I need to. Allah said that He gave us death as the greatest grief we might experience. I don’t understand why He did, while being fully conscious that billions and billions cannot just continue to live without perishing.

Rejuvinating. Renewing.

Everything – absolutely every single thing – must end. We are beautiful because we end. Maybe there is no greater testament as to how then we so freely take one another for granted.

This inability to understand, I’ll address it when I must; first, when I have to wash and bury my own, and then fully when the veil is lifted, and the answers show themselves. Until then, and as days rush forward, it’s a shade of understanding I try to avoid, because my body is too heavy to turn itself in that direction.

I will gorge myself on life from love instead.

I was hoping to nurse her back, and to know her a little longer. I’d even asked mum to bring me some food, and we had set out two saucers for her – water, seeds.

I held her for a lot longer than I needed to, but I wanted to make certain she was gone before giving her body a little place of safety from other animals.

After I’d placed her quietly beneath momma’s mulberry tree, I went upstairs to work at my desk against the window the view of which is the above photo. I watched as another robin came to investigate momma’s garden, maybe looking for their friend.

Until today.

Until today, I hadn’t realized how deeply I believed that there is so much intention and purpose in every detail and fold of our lives, that my only role in my robin’s life was to make sure she didn’t die alone. That often times, and if we are blessed enough, our only role in the lives of any one of creation is to remind them that they are loved and seen if only for the moment we pass through.

Ya Rab. Please let my hands know nothing but care, express nothing but softness, hold no one without love, and be not pulled to the heart of anyone who would not do the same for my own.

—————

**Female robins are, for those curious, distinguishable from male robins primarily by the colour of their breasts; more rust and orange, and less bright red is the female.

Comments closed.