Not long
ago, I was leaving the house in the morning to meet
some appointments and run a few errands. As I
opened the door, I noticed a mourning dove walking
around on our front porch. They've been known
to nest in my hanging ferns or elsewhere on the
porch, which can be somewhat of a nuisance, so I
walked toward the bird, waving my arms, to shoo it
away. The bird just looked at me and walked
backward into a corner of the porch. I
wondered if this bird might be injured. But I
just didn't have the time to try and figure that
out. So I headed off to meet my schedule.
When I
returned home later that afternoon, I noticed the
dove was still on the porch. I tried
again to shoo the bird away, and still it just
looked at me, walking around the porch. At
this point, I was convinced the thing was injured
--since I'd yet to see it flap its wings-- and I
pondered what my next step should be. Our
neighborhood is home to numerous cats, and I really
didn't want this injured dove to be Bully Cat's next
meal. (My husband and I named a neighborhood
cat Bully Cat... a rough looking short-haired tabby
with fat round face, a nub for a tail, who would
boldly and aggressively saunter onto our porch and
eat our pet cat's food. Although we've not
seen much of Bully Cat on our porch since our pet
died, I figured an injured bird was just the thing
to prompt his unwelcome return to our turf.)
I called
my husband at work to seek his opinion on how I
should handle this situation. You see, I
didn't inherit my grandmother's keen sense of how to
retrieve and nurse injured birds, and I confess, I
was a bit squeamish. But what I learned when I
called David caught me by surprise. He told me
that early that morning when he went out to snag the
paper from the walkway, he noticed a dead dove on
the sidewalk near the street. He had scooped
it up into a bag and disposed of it before Bully Cat
could alert his band of neighborhood cat thugs.
It was at
this point that I recalled that mourning doves mate
for life. True, their life expectancy
certainly can't compare to our life expectancies,
but, nonetheless, they are monogamous creatures like
we. And the pieces of the puzzle fell into
place. I believe that this mourning dove was
in mourning. It was grieving the loss of its
mate, and it stood vigil on our porch, near the spot
of its beloved's death.
Several
folks who are dear to me, have experienced
grief-causing events over the last few months....
the death of a mother; the end of a marriage; the
disillusionment with a job; the selfishness of a
sibling; the relocation from a familiar home and
church to a new and unknown town; the miscarriage of
a child; the failing mind and health of a parent.
And for the bulk of us, we probably only think of
death as being a reason to grieve. But
this couldn't be farther from the truth.
I believe
it was the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard who said
something to the effect that what we grieve is not
so much the past we lost, but the future that will
not be. Anytime we lose our assumed future, we
experience grief.
And,
contrary to public opinion, there is no one way to
grieve, no time table on grieving, no exclusive list
of happenings suitable for grieving. Those who
have extensively studied grief have come to
recognize a handful of stages or steps that a
grieving person will experience. But the time
it takes to get through the stages, the order in
which the stages come, the general sense of
progression through the grieving process... all of
these things are as individual and unique as there
are the number of folks experiencing grief.
Now,
while I don't know if mourning doves go through
grief stages as humans do, I felt badly that I'd
tried to shoo this bird away. I had, in my
attempt to "save" the bird, misinterpreted its
needs. I was blinded to its grieving and
wanted it simply to move on with its life, and get
off of my porch.
As we
find ourselves here, in the midst of holiday hooplah
and festive fanfare, let us not forget that special
occasions can, for some, serve to highlight that
"future that will not be" and may bring up the
emotions and behaviors that accompany happenings not
fully grieved in ourselves, in those we love, in
those we barely know. Some of the symptoms of
ungrieved grief are bitterness and anger. As
we hurry our way through our holiday schedules, I
pray we take time to observe one another, to listen
and minister and tend to one another, to pray for
one another, and to be patient with one another in
those things we don't understand, lest we
misinterpret the significance of what we have been
privileged to witness.
Grace and peace
to you as you journey.
Yours in Christ,
~~Jennifer
12/01/06
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