July 2013
Visitings
Mark Cocker's new book Birds and People (which you can order here Amazon ) tells one tale of a woman who lost her 22 year old daughter in an accident. Some weeks after the funeral she was visited by a kingfisher, which sat on her patio and allowed itself to be picked up and stroked - an amazing thing for such a shy and elusive bird. The woman describes the experience as being 'a mystifying solace to me over the years'.
For some weeks after Gideon died, we noticed a robin in our garden - a frail young robin with a deformed leg. It seemed very tame. Every day we would put out meal worms and the robin would come right up to us to feed. Then one morning we found it dead on the gravel beneath the persimmon tree. We cried and cried and buried it beneath a stone.
I mentioned this to Tara, who arranged Gideon's funeral. She said to me "oh, you've had a visiting. It's quite a common thing."
Yesterday in the garden, a comma butterfly landed on my knee. It's tiny legs gripped my skin for an instant before it fluttered away.