“Hope is the thing with feathers…”  Emily Dickenson wrote.  “It sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.” 

Hope, for me, is what makes this New Year something to celebrate—hope and gratitude.  That is what this story is about.

Many of you have already read this story, as I posted it last summer on Vanessa’s birthday.  But I feel compelled to share it again, and I hope that you will too.

We can make a difference in people’s lives, friends.  Vanessa did not know that she was saving my life.  But I will tell you all, she did.  You may never know the effect of your thoughts words and actions on others, but never doubt their power—to help or to harm.  Your choice.

It is with this in mind that I commit to doing what Vanessa did.  Once a day, from now until her birthday on July 25^th, I will post and tweet words of encouragement—quotes, song lyrics, prayers, scriptures—words that comfort or inspire.  And I invite you to share your favorites with me here on FB or in the comments section of my blog.   I want to know what inspires you.

This story is excerpted from my book, but I encourage you to share it if you feel so inclined.  If you know anyone who has suffered great loss, or anyone who might benefit from encouragement to be less critical (Ha!  All of us?), or simply if you want to shout out to your indefatigable little birds, tag them and pass this on.

Happy New Year my feathered friends.  I love you all.

 

Surge

The birds are especially noisy this morning, and I like that.  I’ve been observing them for weeks now.  They fascinate me.  They inspire me.  Do they know that they are endangered?  Is that why they are so determined? 

They are nesting on the beach behind the house, and when I say, on the beach, I mean, right there on the wide open beach, depositing their eggs in a small divot or “scrape” in the sand.  No twigs and moss and feathers formed into a bowl to cradle their hatchlings.  No sheltering tree limbs to conceal their incubating progeny.  Just a scuff in the stark sand.  Their vulnerability is alarming.  Two different species of birds are nesting together, the sleek and elegant Black Skimmer in their tiny tuxedos, and the Least Tern, one of the smallest of the gull family. The Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission has cordoned off the area, but the birds themselves do a damn good job of keeping inquisitive tourists away from their babies.

I pass within a couple hundred feet of their nesting area on my afternoon walks.  They work together, the skimmers and the terns, and don’t seem to notice that I outweigh them by a factor of about a thousand to one. They circle and screech, then dive bomb into my hair.  And though each bird alone is no bigger than a Snickers bar, together, they intimidate the hell out of me.  I’m curious about their eggs, but not even considering venturing close enough to gawk.  Mission accomplished indefatigable little birds.  I admire your dauntlessness.

Yes, they are noisy this morning.  I will be sad in just a few weeks when they migrate southward with their fledglings.  They make me feel hopeful somehow, persevering like they do against all odds.

I think of Emily Dickenson’s poem:

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”

Hope, as a tireless shorebird carrying the tune of life even when I’ve grown too tired, or too stubborn, or too lazy, or simply too bewildered, to sing it myself.  Hope can always be found if I’m still enough, open enough.  The little bird “never stops at all.”

But there was a time when grief deafened me.  Maybe we’ve all been there.  It’s like that awful, awful stillness the first morning after a hurricane—silence that feels dreadful, when the birds and the frogs and the crickets and even the winds are muted, and the absence of sound is eerie and unnatural.

Jenna, my golden niece, my cherished friend, had died.  Suddenly.  Senselessly.  How could that possibly be?  How?  It just couldn’t be true.  She had turned 27 on Monday.  I had mailed her a birthday present, money for a ticket home.  I will wake up in just a minute, and she’ll be back, sashaying down the beach like the she-sells-seashells-by-the-seashore girl.  Seashore girls do not drown.  No. no. Please, no. Are you there, God?  Straighten this all out, please.

He did not straighten it all out.  At least not to my liking.

I wept and slept and drank—just to weep and sleep and drink some more.  I stood knee deep in the churning surf and raged at God on the shore of the very beach Jenna haunted.  Until I could rage no more.  And the quiet, the hideous quiet, engulfed me like hurricane surge, and I was lost to myself.

My best friend at that time, Vanessa, could see that the silence, the grief of my sudden and tragic loss was killing me, and it broke her heart to see me suffering so.  Vanessa became that thing with feathers and nested right there in my soul, and stayed there with me until I could hear the songbird again.

She did this, among many ways, through quotes.  Vanessa was not a reader, certainly not a writer, but she knew that I was both and that the written word was very meaningful to me.  So every single day, she “serenaded” me with words.  Every morning, I would wake up swollen-eyed and mournful, to a text on my phone:

August 3: “There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and recovered hope.”  George Elliot

September 5: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”  Khalil Gibran

October 9: “I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest.  I do not judge the universe.”  Dalai Lama

Day after day, week after week, Vanessa faithfully sent the quotes, and gradually I began hearing again the gentle trilling of the feathered thing, the resurgence of hope.

November 14:  “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”  Cicero

November 23: “Grief can be the garden of compassion.  If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in our life’s search for love and wisdom.”  Rumi

December 12:  “Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.”  God

On December 19^th, after 150 days of texting me these healing words, Vanessa sent this powerful quote by one of my favorite writers, Ann Lamott:

“You will lose someone you cannot live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved.  But this is also the good news.  They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up.  And you come through.  It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

Four days later, Vanessa died suddenly.

But the thing with feathers lived on.  Somehow, some way, the hope that Vanessa had rekindled in me didn’t die with her.  I am so grateful to her for that.

Did she know that she was endangered?  Is that why she was so determined?

I spoke at Vanessa’s memorial, and every head nodded when I said that V was the president of everyone’s fan club.  It didn’t take a tragedy to garner her encouragement.  I had written in my journal a few years back when struggling with depression:  “Vanessa is my biggest fan.  She buoys me up when I get heavy.  She makes me laugh.  She fills out the baggy edges of my personality.  She loves out loud.  (She does everything out loud.)”

And you’d think that death, as powerful as it is, as cunning and cruel as it seems, would silence even the most robust of cheerleaders.  But Vanessa’s humble gift of words, of carefully chosen inspiration, lived on with me even after her soul had departed.  I carried them—texted to my phone, written in my journal, and imprinted on my heart.  She changed me, and unwittingly prepared me for her own death.  You will lose someone you cannot live without…

And what she did was not Hollywood heroic—she didn’t rescue me from vampires or intercept a bullet on the battlefield or offer up one of her kidneys for me.  But she saved me nonetheless.

Very simply, with care and determination, without fanfare and self-promotion, she encouraged me.  Every single day until she died.  She encouraged me.

And this, I believe now more than ever in my life, is what we must do for each other.  It doesn’t have to be with quotes, or grand gestures of charity, or inspiring sermons or stories, or anything so contrived or highfalutin.  We simply must encourage each other with everything we do and say, all the time, starting now. We must make it a habit to validate others, to refrain from criticizing anyone, anywhere.  That includes our spouses and our children.  But also, co-workers, family members, even strangers we encounter along the way.  And of course, our best friends.  We have no idea how much time we have left. I would have liked four more decades with Vanessa. Four days is what I got.

I’ve always sensed, ever since I was a little kid, that this is my raison d’être—the reason I’m here—to encourage, maybe even inspire. That said, I fall so short every single day.  My ego gets in the way.  My insecurities.  My fear.  So many days I am petty and vain.  But some days I get it right.

I keep a note on my desk next to my computer where I do my writing.  My son wrote it on an index card in purple sharpie a couple of years ago.  He wrote it for me.

You inspire happiness…no trait is even comparable.

And that may be my favorite quote of all.  Simple words of encouragement and affirmation from a teenage boy to his mom.  Eight words. They inspire me to do better, to be better every single day.  He probably doesn’t even remember writing them.  And even though I believe that he is the one with the gift of inspiring happiness, I will strive be the person he believes me to be, because, I agree—no trait is even comparable.

Vanessa had an intuitive knowledge of this, and she was brave and tireless and determined.  And I survived, Vanessa.  I thrived.

Mission accomplished indefatigable little bird.  I admire your dauntlessness.