A Birdie Funeral

Never in my life have so many dead animals showed up inside my house before… I’ve lived with cats my entire life, and until this year have never had them bring in so many (if any) deceased little critters, including mice, birds, and lizards… And so me and my daughters had another little funeral today for a baby bird that we found on our living room floor. I let the girls hold the bird, they wanted to, and so I let them. Perhaps in holding death, it takes away some of the fear of death, some of the scariness… Which as of lately for my 5 year old, has been the feeling around death, fear. And so we said prayers for the little bird, we asked our daddy in heaven to take good care of the little birdie, we prayed the bird mommy would be comforted. And then we buried the bird, and put flowers on top of its grave. And so perhaps in finding all of these kitty “presents”, it allows death into our lives in a very tangible, non-threatening, sort of way. It allows us to handle death, comfort the dead with our prayers and holding, and offer prayers to their little families. It allows us to participate in peaceful death rituals, so that perhaps when they think about the death of their own father, they’ll know death isn’t so much scary as it is sad, and that we can offer our prayers, our love, and our holding, and find some sort of peace in knowing that this is simply a part of what it means to live.