There was a lost life on our doorstep in the morning. A beauty, robin, gone. My path blocked by a little body, at once desperately important and insignificant.

Every trouble seems the same these days.

i picked it gently from the pavement with a scrap of old cloth. i could feel soft down, tiny bones, ribs that recently held a beating heart, wings that had flown. How fragile, how worthy, this small thing felt.

i cried for it, for all of us. So important, so insignificant.

i needed to do something to honor this life, however small. A death on my doorstep felt generous. An invitation. This departed robin was a sign of nothing but that change is necessary, insistent, unstoppable. That we must—always and for the sake of everything we hold dear—accept the invitation. We must grieve.

At the suggestion of a clever friend (“build it a little boat and send it out to sea. on fire.”), i gave the bird a burial fit for royalty. A pyre carefully built, a place thoughtfully chosen. The pyre was proud, the body beautiful. i wonder if ever a robin has been so exalted in death, so beloved after living.

One death. 239,000 deaths. One honorable funeral. One crying human. Grief is not linear, nor timely. Only necessary.

For nothing is important or insignificant without our choosing.

——-———

And then this happened!