Cremation

The birds were talking to me today but not showing much of themselves. I was woken by the sound of a love mourning dove (sic) around 5:45 am. As the girls and I went out into the backyard to play in the afternoon, a mockingbird flew out from behind and landed on the wire in front of us. Then as we worked in the garden, a scrub jay landed very close, on the cement wall not three feet from where we stood. He flew over us and onto the fence at the back of the garden and Grace asked him for a feather. Later I heard a bird I didn’t recognize as the girls and I took a walk down the block. It was a short call, very uniform, and very high. Another bird was also calling at the same time and I guessed it was a woodpecker.

Later on, after dinner I went out to water the garden and heard the tell tale squawks of parrots, but they were behind trees and I could not see them. I finally made out five birds flying in the distance, but by then they were so far away I could only identify them as parrots from their quick flapping. As I left the garden at dusk, I was pushed to light a fire and burn the wing of the chicken that I had thought was a hawk’s which was now just a pile of feathers that I was still hanging onto. I had been thinking of burning them for a while but felt I needed a plan. In that moment it seemed simple. Make a little fire with dead leaves on the cement outside my studio and throw the feathers into the fire. As I began to set it up, two scrub jays were calling, again out of view, very urgently back and forth in the large oak just opposite my studio. I spoke to the birds: “Here I light a fire and offer myself to the birds. I ask permission to cremate the wings and feathers that have been presented to me. I offer myself with gratitude for my gifts as a midwife into death for many small creatures. I acknowledge that these deaths may have been painful and in this cremation I set that pain free, that it may be turned into positive energy for a new purpose.” As I lit the fire and as it took off and momentarily became a large flame I gave thanks to the fire and acknowledged it’s powerful ability to transform physical matter into smoke, ash and ember.

The fire kept wanting to go out so I paid a lot of attention to it and gave thanks to the wind for helping give more energy to the fire and I put a lot of energy into keeping it going long enough for all the feathers to burn. I felt good about my comfort with fire, to know how it burns and how to keep it going, but I also had to work at it because fire can be hard to control. There is no way of knowing what will happen. But I trust that everything will. Eventually, the fire will burn out.

And it did and I carefully gathered up the ashes and bits of bone that were left on the cement and carried them to my beloved compost pile. I spoke a few words as I placed the ashes on the pile, asking mother earth to take them back as I folded them into the dark dirt. Then I took the hose and washed off the remaining ash from the cement which now had a little yellowish mark where the fire had been. I thanked the water for it’s cleansing of the spot that was now a sacred spot for me.