Letting go
strange but true
A torrent of madhouse mockery rang along a clanking hospital ward in a remorseless dream of aching powerlessness. It quickly and mercifully shattered into irretrievable pieces as she struggled into wakefulness. As she opened her eyes to exit the dream, it all slowly morphed into an odd but recognisable chorus of distress.
Hastily re-orientating, she abandoned the twisted tumble of her bed and shuffled groggily to the window. Looking down onto the river, a towering flurry of dark wings spiralled above the water, a little downstream from the house. As she opened the window, the raucous clamouring of the birds escalated, overwhelming her own repressed misery.
Animal welfare ever second nature to her, she grabbed the nearest clothes, and headed for bathroom, stairs, jacket, towel, wellies, and leapt out into the chilly May dawn, and along the sleepy lane of cottages to the village bridge. From that vantage point she could clearly observe the source of the avian drama - a squawky fledgeling jackdaw floundered feebly in the shallows. In typical corvid inter-tribal response, the neighbourhood rookery soldiers flanked the gathering of hysterical jackdaws, whilst a couple of nosey blackbirds chinked nervously from an overhanging sycamore. Some fifty birds flapped and squalled: such behaviour being usually directed at a predator, their concerned focus was both remarkable and palpable. Perhaps it had fallen from the grasp of a kidnapper.
As she clambered down the bank to the waterside, the birds began to drop into the overhead branches and fell increasingly silent. She felt the combined lens of a multitude of avian eyes focussed upon her and her intentions. At the water’s edge, it seemed they all held their breath together, as she gently approached the struggling mess of feathers.
Briefly, she met the gaze of its wild sapphire eyes, but as her fingers reached out, the youngster panicked, and flapping feebly just beyond her grasp, was suddenly snatched by a tentacle of the current, and swept away into the mid-river turmoil. She sensed a mute primal gasp from above, before the sound of a hundred wings powered up and away, as the witnesses departed suddenly and without comment. They just left. To return to the day, seeming to understand and accept the final submission.
Defeated, saddened, and suddenly cold, she scrambled up the steep steps, and squelched back across the bridge, aware now of a few bemused human observers, as they too emerged into the day. Oblivious to their gaze, her thoughts returned to her frail and confused mother, still defying the mercy of death in a hospital bed hundreds of miles away. The doctors had advised that she break her lengthy bedside vigil for a couple of days’ respite, to ‘gather herself’. Her home had always revived and fortified her spirit, and so she had driven through the night, leaving her mother feebly fluttering in the shadowy shallows, resisting the snatch of the cosmic tides. Re-burdened with this familiar sadness, she turned the corner of the house to her door.
As her fingers lingered on the cold handle, she looked over her shoulder, aware of a presence. On the wall, some six feet away from her, stood two large rooks and a jackdaw, where no birds ever sat. They gazed in silent appraisal for some seconds, before one of the rooks stretched up his glittering throat and uttered a deeply guttural ‘craaah’, whereupon they took flight in a flurry of dark metallic plumage. And in that instant, with a surge of elemental comprehension, she felt at one and at peace with the way of the world.
Later that morning, the phone call came as no surprise - indeed a blessing - as the skies released a sudden downpour, and the river hastened its unstoppable quest for freedom.