A Vigil, on Birds and Glass

I think I must have been semi-awake for a long time. When you're barely awake, yet still barely dreaming, you lack motivation to fall back into sleep or to pry open your eyes. I don't think I was asleep, but when my eyes opened I became aware of dreams still spinning in my mind. Clearly, it was too early to be in the land of the living just yet. Lindsey always said I sleep like the dead, and who was I to question that.

My eyes were hazy and my body ached as I pushed myself up in our bed, one hand by my side on the mattress and the other over the sheets. I blinked, once, twice, and felt my heavy shoulders slump as I bent my body forward, yawning. I rubbed my sleepy eyes and rubbed a hand through my hair, which had become overgrown and boring of late. Now it was sticking up in all directions and I couldnt be bothered to sweep it from my face.

I felt warmth on my skin, on the side that my wife was not curled against, and I looked to see sunlight dancing on my arms, raising my head to feel it on my face, too. I blinked once again. There was just this one sliver of light, between the wide curtains of the large bedroom window, warming my skin. My eyes burned with the light and sleep.

And there, I felt it.

I wouldn't say it was so sudden, knocking me backwards like a punch to the face. It felt like a swelling, a sick twisting in my stomach, and I dropped my hands from my hair to the comforter that still covered my waist and my legs, my eyes starting to burn a little more with tears.

My Chemical Romance had ended.

I hadn't known that this was how I would feel when it was over. It didn't quite feel like a part of me was empty, nor lost, but more like something inside me that was sick, terminally. I didn't know what to do, for that moment. Maybe I wanted to let the tears go and cry about it. Maybe I wanted to lay back down, curl up beside Lindsey and wish the whole horrid realisation to go away. Maybe I wanted to embrace this turning point, welcome it like I would have welcomed death years ago.

I ended up with my bare feet swung over the side of the bed, touching the carpet and just resting there as I rested my head in my hands. I rubbed at my eyes, almost furiously, and the tears left me quickly. At least, now, I was awake.

My body screamed and protested as I stood, leaving the bedroom and making my way downstairs, to the kitchen. Like every morning, I was too tired to be awake, let alone moving around and walking onto the cold tiles of the kitchen floor. But this felt somewhat different; I wasn't on autopilot, ambling like a zombie towards the only source of caffeine easily acessible at this ungodly hour. I was thinking all the while, and as this deep sadness continued to take over me, the more I wished it would just get it over with and eat me in one big mouthful.

I leaned against the kitchen counter, the drip of the coffee from the machine already having started now, and I swung back and forth slowly on the balls of my feet. My eyes were closed again, as I settled into the calm silence that surrounded me and lingered in every room of the house, and for a brief moment I thought it had deceived me and was going to eat me, too. Silence and sadness, feasting on my tired aching flesh. It seemed a reasonable way to go.

In that silence, leaving the coffee to itself, I stepped outside the kitchen and just further along the hall to the front door, pulling back the latch and stepping onto the doorstep, a low and burdened sigh breaking past my lips, myself not even aware that I had been holding it back. Closing my eyes, if only for a moment, I felt myself breathing in the warm spring air and letting it fill me up, relaxing me. Nothing seemed to have changed, as the wind touched my face and whispered through my hair. Yes, a beautiful day.

It took me a moment before I stepped back inside my home. Feeling not quite refreshed, but certainly alive, I closed the door and, upon doing so, I heard something. A rustle, and then--

Chirp. Chirp.

Cocking an eyebrow, and taking another step forward, I heard the same sound again, musical, airy. I walked down the hall in search of the noise, and turning my head towards the open door of the library, I saw it: A little bird, brown and shaking his tiny tail feathers (I liked to assume it was a he), had flown into the library.

I panicked. There was a bird, perched happily on one of the little reading chairs and chirping at me when I stepped into the room. I wanted to step past it, open the windows without startling the poor creature away and calmy usher him out the window; but I knew that all of my stealth and ability to make my footfalls quiet had disappeared with the first year of my life when I couldn't actually walk. I was hopeless. But I knew I had to somehow get the bird to leave; there was no way he could take up living with us.

Then suddenly, as I took another step forward, the bird rustled its feathers and suddenly took off up towards the ceiling, batting its little wings furiously and soaring up above me in circles. I may or may not have yelped, panicking again, moving back towards the door of the library for a moment in the fleeting fear that my crown of bed hair was going to become a crown of bird shit adorned bed hair.

Seeing that the bird was still high above me, I darted across the room to try to open the windows, only to make a helpless and slightly irritated noise when the little creature swooped down and fluttered out of the library. I chased it, my arms moving in big circular motions, almost theatrical, as I tried to shoo it into my office, where I knew I had these great big windows.

After a minute of flapping my hands around like I too was about to take flight, the bird chirped louder and flew into the office. Chasing after it, it was then that I heard Lindsey's footsteps on the stairs, and then on the carpet of the hallway, following the noise of flapping wings, bird-talk and my own weird noises of annoyance and encouragement towards the bird that sounded like a language from Star Trek- or The Sims.

Calm, as always, Lindsey briskly brought into the room a blanket swiped from the couch of the living room, and though laughing at the odd-looking dance I was doing with the bird, ducking my head and swinging my arms and hopping from one foor to the other, she told me to open a window, or something, while she batted the blanket at our new found guest.

I dashed to the windows, moaning when I found them to be screened, and then heard something above me.

Smack.
Smack.
Smack!

While watching the now panicked bird slam itself repeatedly against the glass, and me now fearing for the state of its tiny brain, I heard another set of footsteps on the stairs, these lighter and more frantic, excited. Bandit pranced into the office and, upon seeing the bird that I was still desperately trying to free, she squealed and giggled and rushed to me, jumping at the bird. I tried to calm her, not wanting her to scare the poor creature, but it was too late, because in a little flurry of brown feathers, our guest was en route towards the living room.

We chased him, and my eyes were blown even more panicked as I watched the bird swoop in and out and in between the high beams of the ceiling, and upon feeling a smack on my arm from the blanket my wife was holding, she told me to open the door. I did so, still watching the bird.

Lindsey was coaxing our little friend with the blanket and her hands, Bandit watching from her side, mystified, and I could hear loud chirping as the bird refused to be shooed out in such a manner. Another flash of feathers and it swooped back into the library, my wife chasing it still, and then I laughed, seeing the bird emerge and fly small circles around my daughter's head, her little dimpled smile cast across her face, and then the bird was on its way towards me.

I ducked my head, feeling the brown feathers of his wings ghost over my hair, and then he was sitting, perched on the front step outside the door, cocking its head and chirping once again. Lindsey came to the door, Bandit in front of her, and I murmured for her to be quiet as we all watched him.

He hopped, once, twice, three times, four, and then he took off, wings spread wide and beating against the light breeze.

The three of us let out a cheer, Bandit then giggling and Lindsey closing the door, and I picked up my daughter, carrying her to the living room and bouncing her in my arms. Lindsey laughed at the both of us, kissing my cheek as she went into the kitchen, presumably making the coffee I had forgotten about, as I sat Bandit down to watch morning cartoons.

As I sat beside my daughter, watching cartoons with her and feeling yet more sunlight on my face, I smiled, in realisation.

As soon as that little brown bird had flown into my home and into my life, I had forgotten about my coffee and I had forgotten about my sadness. Because there had been something to do, an order to keep, and our momentary guest had been my distraction from the silence and corresponding sadness that I had been considering to let swallow me. I was no longer sad.

I sat there, for a moment or so more, before I left Bandit to her cartoons and, forgetting once more about the coffee that awaited me, I stepped back into the office where the bird had been before. I sat down, and here I am, writing the letter I always knew that I would.

A vigil, on birds and glass.

March 24th, 2013.