Getting The Message

I struggled with the existence of an afterlife for some time after my Dad died. I've be given many, many signs - which is a singular post that's been rolling around my head for some time. I will eventually get to that.

I have come to believe, without a doubt, that my Dad is still with us, watching over us. It's not the way I want it to be, it is the way it is and it has to be enough. It's taken me a long time to accept that. I'm still grieving, and will for the rest of my life. I still have days when the grief storms hit and I rail at the universe. I also have days like yesterday, when I receive a gift from the other side that give me faith in a continued existence beyond life.

Case in point:

I have a bird feeder in my back yard. When I'm too lazy to close the back door when the dog comes in, birds occasionally fly in and hit the glass of the front door. Yesterday was just such an occasion. I saw a bird fly through and hit the front door. When I went out to rescue it, I heard a second fluttering under son's workbench. I managed to grab that Junco and released it out the back door. The second Junco was clinging to the screen of a storm window.

I gently cupped the Junco in my hand and went to the back door. I held my hand out the door but, the bird just hunkered down into the warmth of my hand. I figured it had been stunned by the impact and just waited for it to recover. It just kept sitting in my hand. It was snowing at the time, I was still in my pj's and it was bloody cold. I brought my hand to my chest and stroked the downy soft head, checked it's wings to see if they were broken and then extended my arm out the open door. The bird started chirping softly. I opened my hand and bounced it up and down a few times to see if it would fly away. It didn't. It hunkered down and chirped a few more times. I opened my hand and moved it up and down a bit more vigorously. The wild bird bounced from my hand to my arm and stayed there looking at me. I talked softly to it and it just kept eyeballing me. About 10 minutes had passed at this point and I was getting mighty cold. I told it to fly away, I got the message, and then it flew to the tire of the snowblower under the feeder.

Skeptics could logically explain this away. Was the bird just stunned and disoriented? Probably.

I choose to believe something else. I've posted before about my Dad's affinity with animals. This wasn't my first unusual encounter with a wild bird since he passed. The fact that there were two birds trapped on the porch was a first time thing too.

I've been asking my Dad to watch over Christopher and keep him safe.

I think he just let me know he got the message.

Thank you Daddy.