Page 167 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II

a basket next to the front door, where they could keep an eye on comings and goings. I

sensed that neither would fly out, so in the spring and fall, the outside door was almost

always left open. I loved the way Lucia answered him when Lily sang to her, imitating his

very complex song with ease. As close as they were, the telepathic connection between

Lily B and me never ceased, which frankly surprised me. I now thought of Lily B as my

animal “familiar” – a guide whose presence graced my life. Lily has become one of my

most important teachers.

During periods when I suffer from depression, Lily flies around my head to get my

attention. Once he succeeds, he sings his triple cooing song. And of course, for a time at

least, I am pulled out of unhealthy self-absorption. How can anyone resist this kind of

attention?

The summer before last, Lucia died suddenly at age seven. The morning I found her on

the floor, Lily was standing over her dead body protectively. He looked up at me once,

and the anguish that passed between us was palpable.

I refused to let Lily grieve alone. I played his favorite music and kept talking to him. My

dogs gathered around him, too. I let Lily guide me, leaving her dead body with him until

he was ready to leave her. When he finally flew into one of his baskets on the porch, I

went out and dug a hole in my flourishing flower garden. He stared at me in silence as I

gently placed his mate in the ground just outside the door. I filled in the earth around her

body and placed a flat stone on the bare ground to protect the place where she lay.

When I re-entered the porch we sat together quietly, no one uttering a sound. After a

time I began to coo to him mimicking his threefold call. At first he did not respond. I was

trying to convey to him that he still had us – the rest of his family – and that we loved him

– I, most of all. I also told him in my mind that this time I was not going to look for

another mate unless he indicated to me that he absolutely had to have one, because

both of us were getting old... If he died and left a mate, I knew that I would always be

comparing a new bird to him. He had a decision to make. Would he choose to live or

die? That day I never left the house and Lily’s silence was unnerving.