Cardinals

You're not gonna believe this!  It's crazy!  I'm almost afraid to tell you because you'll probably think I've gone 'round the bend! 

What are you talkin' about, Dad? I query, my brows quizzically furrowed, but smiling to soften his budding paranoia. 

It's the cardinals.  I swear!  I think it's Mom telling me, It's OK, Tom.  Honest to God!  They just show up!  Every time!

Oh? I tentatively respond. I can see in his eyes a vulnerability, a happy belief that he fears I may chide him for.  What are you saying, Dad?

Well, every day,at all different times, too, he adds, building the miracle, I just sit here in the window, and every time, within minutes, he emphasizes that word, there she is, the cardinal!  The other day, I was going through some papers, just sorting stuff, and I found this journal.  Mom wrote in it-just one day.  His voice cracks.  And she was mad at me, he continues weakly.  And then with regret, She was really peed off, and she wrote it all down.  It was the only thing in the book. He looks deflated.   

Oh, Dad.  That was one day in time.  Everyone fights and argues.  She just happened to write it down that day,I offer.

Oh, I know.   But he still aches.  His memories of her are crystalline, like multi-faceted stars-idealized moments across a lifetime.  These memories are the ones he carries around in his pocket, every day.  Any less perfect ones are washed out, like old dim photographs.  In the three long years of her convalescence, all the real life ups and downs were sifted, like wheat from the chaff, until only the golden ones remained.  This journal, in words penned by her own hand, somehow taints the gold. And just as I am about to rationalize it all away for him, he interjects. 

So I was feeling really bad.  I just couldn't shake it.  I sat down, there, in my chair, you know, in the bay window.  And bigger than life, there she was!  The cardinal!.  And then the golden one came!   

I don't correct him and tell him that the red bird is actually the male.  These bird sightings hold him together.  Who am I to pull out my naturalist card now? I look out the window, waiting on my own sighting.  This window is where Mom?s urn of ashes holds court, amongst all of her plants, now under his dutiful care.  Am I wrong to carry on, to go along?  My heart tells me no. 

I stand there and I can feel the anticipation.  I really want to think that my Mom is somehow summoned to this windowsill, allowed to fly in, when we need her, on flaming red wings.  God lets her visit, I reason unreasonably.   He knows that we need her here.  We loved her so much.  He must be letting her come to us.  Does everyone go straight to heaven?  Or does He let us release our loved ones in stages, helping us to let her go-baby steps. 

And just as we stand there, the red and golden birds appear.  First, the male, in a fan of red feathers.   She follows, a golden partner with undertones of red. I am here, she is saying; we are sure.  But we won?t tell everyone this. 

With the faith of children, we stand still as statues and quietly greet the bright red bird, and his golden mate.  They cock their heads and peer back in at us.  They bring brightness and lightness, sometimes at dawn, sometimes at twilight.  But always when you least expect them.  Like a memory.