Weird Goodbyes

Robins, Instagram, and Sheryl Crow

One of the first messages I sent to a WhatsApp group of my closest friends after my father died almost two weeks ago was, “I know this sounds weird but I’m so pleased it’s sunny today”. The weather has become a fixation of mine over the last week or so (how British of me). I couldn’t bear it when low, dark clouds bore down and equally I hated endless blue skies. I was only happy when it was bright and sunny with some clouds. I couldn’t figure out why until I realised that rays of sunshine beaming out from fluffy white clouds is the West’s common depiction of heaven and, even though I’m not religious, I found those skies comforting.

There have been other moments this week when I have questioned my view of the universe, or at least marvelled in puzzlement. On the afternoon after my father died, my mother and I sat in his garden drinking a glass of wine, talking and crying. Suddenly a little robin elegantly flew in and started to hop around, going from one of Dad’s pots to the next. My mother said, “Oh look, it’s Eddie come to check on his plants”. We laughed at our silliness and said hello to him. The next day, two robins came to the garden. We were disappointed. Now there were two, it obviously wasn’t my father visiting us, just a couple of friendly birds. How foolish we had been.

I only found out later that for centuries robins have been seen as messengers for lost, loved ones, sent to indicate to those left behind that they are alright. 

Last Friday, after I had returned to London, my mother messaged to tell me that there were two dead robins outside the backdoor leading into the garden. I called her immediately. She was freaked out; in the 13 years they’d lived in that house they had never seen a dead bird in the garden. After some thought, I told my mother that one of the robins represented being a husband, the other a father, and having done their duty to tell us that Dad was ok, had moved on. Do I actually believe that or do I think there just happened to be two dead birds in the garden? I don’t really know anymore. 

In The Year Of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes that “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” It is a place that has constantly surprised me these last few days. I re-read my note to you all last Friday, in which I wrote “The grief is real”. I had meant that I was experiencing grief, but on some other level, I suppose I was saying ‘It’s real, it exists’, like grief was the bogeyman or Bigfoot; a mysterious, terrifying tale that I had been warned about and now know to be true. 

I’d like to say that my grief has a deep connection to the natural world, it lives in those sunny, cloud-filled skies and the birds. And some of it has. But so much of it has been wrapped up in technology. It’s re-reading old texts between me and my father. It’s looking at his Instagram page where he left only 12 squares, mostly pictures of flowers he had grown and one photo of my mother. It’s the double tick next to the messages on our family’s WhatsApp group no longer turning blue because there’s someone that hasn’t read the message, that can’t. 

I didn’t know whether to commemorate him on my own Instagram or not, I was undecided, so in the end I posted a link to the newsletter announcing his death in my Stories, which is how I always share my posts on a Friday, followed by a photo of me sitting on his knee as a baby, and then one of my son in the exact same position. As the countdown began to when the Stories would expire, I grew sadder and sadder, as if I’d given my dad a timeframe to be remembered and to matter. When it disappeared after 24 hours, I broke down. ‘How foolish’, I thought, for at least the fourth time that week. 

“Music helps, I found”, messaged one friend of mine. And indeed it has. When you can’t eat, or read, or watch television, or really sleep, and when you’re so worried about your mother’s devastation over losing her partner of 47 years, and you just can’t believe you’ll never see someone again, it seems all that’s left is music. 

I was with my husband in our own garden listening to BBC 6 Music when a song called “Weird Goodbyes” by The National and Bon Iver came on, which I hadn’t really heard since it first came out a couple of years ago, and I decided it was the perfect accompaniment to my grief. It’s been on repeat, but each day that passes I play it a little less. I’ve since learned that the song is, among other things, a break-up song, but then what is death but the ultimate break-up? Really it’s about the past and the sorrow it brings. I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to it but I suspect it will get the top spot on my Spotify Wrapped at the end of this year. 

But the music doesn’t all need to be lugubrious. Some friends and I were supposed to see Sheryl Crow on Monday for an intimate acoustic gig at the Broadwick Soho and they delicately enquired as to whether I might still like to go. Anytime I do karaoke, I sing Sheryl Crow; she is my uplifting, feel-good place. I thought it would be nice to get out of the house so I went, and my friends showed up for me with such care and affection, like they were tending to a wilted flower. Everyone was so gentle. When tears unexpectedly rolled down my face as I was singing along to “If It Makes You Happy”, one friend grabbed me around the waist and held me tight to stop me drooping further.

I have been completely overwhelmed by the goodwill of friends and strangers alike: the comments, the messages and emails, the flowers, the offers of walks and wine, the poems sent by people I’ve never met. It has been astonishing and I am forever grateful. I’ve felt a deep connection to others who have lost parents, who have shared their own stories with me, and offered me a hand to hold in the ether.

Whatever I make of the robins, and I’m still not sure, it is these kindnesses that have shown me that everything is going to be alright.