Tag grief

Owl be seeing you

Nancy Crowe

“To that which you tame, you owe your life,” Stacey O’Brien was told when she adopted a tiny barn owlet in 1985. The tiny creature had an injured wing and would not have made it in the wild, so O’Brien brought the wild into her home. She tells their story in Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl.PaperbackCover

One would think the Caltech biologist knew what she was getting into. She was part of a scientific research community that in many ways was its own subculture, so she had not only knowledge but support. But does any new parent truly know what he or she is getting into? Perhaps the task is not to know, but discover.

To provide Wesley with what he needed, O’Brien had to enter the world of a sophisticated bird of prey with his own set of rules — “The Way of the Owl,” as she would call it. This required her to procure and prepare mice to feed him — all in a day’s work for an owl mom, but not so easy for an adoptive human mom, even a scientist. You recognize it’s the way of nature. But still.

Wesley was as devoted to O’Brien as an owl in the wild would be to his mate, and he held her to the same standards. When she traveled, he pouted upon her return. When gentleman callers turned up, he let them know who ruled the roost. He groomed himself fastidiously; if he plucked a feather on one side of his body, he invariably pulled the corresponding feather on the other side. Wesley even became an unexpected link with O’Brien’s grandmother, a fellow animal lover. O’Brien also learned to use her intuition to care for and communicate with Wesley.

The relationship lasted nearly 20 years — through jobs, boyfriends, and the ups and downs of life. Sometimes she cried into his feathers and he tried to understand. When she had to contend with her own life-threatening illness, the knowledge that Wesley needed her helped keep her going. “I looked into the eyes of the owl, found the way of God there, and decided to live,” she writes.

After Wesley passed from this world, writing about their journey together gave O’Brien a way to cope with her grief, and to offer the rest of us a glimpse of The Way of the Owl.

Mismatched sand dollars

Nancy Crowe

198414763_32ccdcb344_bIt’s the task adult children dread: Sorting through the detritus of a parent’s life, however well-lived, while also sorting through grief.

My mother loved her independent apartment in a Southwest Florida retirement community. She had a blast furnishing it 10 years ago, and she got to stay there until she died a couple of days after Christmas (see obit). She’d moved there on her own initiative and resisted being hustled into assisted living. Mom had already pared down quite a bit before moving into her apartment, but when you’re 90, you’ve still got plenty of stuff.

In one drawer was an abundance of earrings, many of which I could not remember her wearing. They were all organized — worn and put carefully back in place. Except for one pair of gold sand dollar post earrings. One had been bent, possibly stepped on. They were both little gold(ish) sand dollars, but they didn’t match. Their hues and patterns were different enough for me to notice, but similar enough for Mom’s eyesight. How similar are any two sand dollars on the beach, anyway?

I poked around for the other sand dollar earrings, but did not find them. That’s how it is. We accumulate experiences, emotions, relationships, scars and stuff. Not all of it matches and some of it’s a little bent out of shape, but it’s ours. We hope that what we don’t take with us will benefit someone somehow, even just to leave a smile.

The sand dollar earrings went into the “keep” box. Life doesn’t match up. Wear it and rock it anyway.

Photo credit: tashland via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Chosen by cats

Nancy Crowe

If you are in transition, chances are an animal is or is waiting to be your teacher. Cats in particular choose us for these missions, although some cleverly let us think we do the choosing.

For example: A tiny, loudmouthed tiger kitten adopted me at a Southern Indiana animal shelter when I was just out of graduate school and unsure of the next step. When I picked her up, she looked me straight in the eye and meowed. I’d passed muster.

UnknownRaven Mardirosian describes a similar experience in “Just Another Crazy Cat Lady Story” (2014). She had just arrived in Fort Collins, Colorado for graduate school. On the East Coast, she’d left behind her fundamentalist Christian family and her “sort-of” girlfriend at their Christian college, which banished Mardirosian from campus when their relationship was uncovered (by said girlfriend).

It was the beginning of many years of wandering — if not running — and yet there she was in an animal shelter, about to take on the commitment of adopting one of two kittens. She was drawn to the darker one, as the orange tabby reminded her a little too much of the beloved family cat whose loss she still grieved. But when the orange tabby’s tiny white paw grabbed her finger, Mardirosian knew she’d been chosen.

That orange tabby, Avery, became Mardirosian’s link to a kinder, gentler way of being amid a return to the East Coast and a series of jobs, schools, apartments and girlfriends. People in her life asked: When are you going to grow up? When are you going to get right with the Lord? Avery just napped in her lap, knowing she would figure it all out.

While living in New York City, Mardirosian adopted Zoey, a little gray street cat, through a fellow CCL (crazy cat lady). After thoroughly vetting Mardirosian and her living space, CCL brought Zoey for a trial visit.

Zoey turns her eyes my way: jade green, with just enough of a razor slit to show that I’m not the only bitch in the room. …

Then she decides to come over and say hello.

She likes you.

The magical three words. All of the chasing after my parents’ love, the attention of the beautiful redhead or blonde or black-haired girl at Henrietta’s … flies back in one terrifying sword of truth — she likes you — as Zoey remains in my lap, not quite seated, not quite standing.

She does, doesn’t she?

Still, in the beginning there was fearsome hissing and screaming, broken glass and an abscessed injury to the base of Avery’s tail. Though Zoey did settle down, she remained moody and opinionated — much like Idgie, my aforementioned loudmouthed tiger cat.

Mardirosian developed a unique relationship with each of her feline charges: “I’m much more aligned to Zoey, the secret observer. The runner. I’ve got that skill down pat. Avery challenges me to remove the labyrinth that winds its way around my heart and let others love me.”

Her account of Avery’s illness and the agonizing decision to let him go, after nearly two decades of life and love, is wrenching. Though deeply moving in and of itself, it brought back the loss of Idgie, who passed at age 16, quite vividly.

Even in her grief, Mardirosian recognizes, as I did, that her friend and guide is “safe, happy and free. … This crazy cat of mine will fly on. I may not know how — but trust the energy that propels him forward will move me in the same way.”

At our city shelter, I met a tortoiseshell kitten. I picked her up, and she reached out and patted my face with her paw. Lucy is now an easygoing 3-year-old, a very different cat with a new set of lessons.

My education continues.