Mothers do many things. Grandmothers, too. One of the hardest is explaining death to those who have barely begun to live.
"Nana, wanna come and see a dead robin?" Benjamin asked."Sure, I'll come."
"Wobbin can't fwy," said Dinah Jane.
"It's in the GARBAGE!" said Tabatha.
Their mother and I accompanied the three pre-schoolers to the death site, just outside large glass church doors. The bird must have seen the sky reflected there.
I imagine its last moments. The upward swoop. An eager rush toward freedom. Toward a mirage. A flight to the death, though it couldn't have known it.
In the novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Fletcher Seagull slams into a cliff while taking flying lessons - and prematurely lands in another world. "The trick, Fletcher, is that we are trying to overcome our limitations in order, patiently," says Jonathan, who has followed. We don't tackle flying through rock until a little later in the program."
Perhaps the robin tackled something she wasn't ready for. Perhaps it found instead, another world, I thought for a moment - hoped for a moment. For surely the God who sees sparrows fall sees falling robins too. Especially the ones battered by the church.
But today it was my grandbeans who found themselves in another world.
Their father had picked the bird up from where it had fallen. Its body, designed to do things no human being can (though not for crashing through the doors to God's house), now lay on a platform built for garbage disposal.
"Wobbin can't fwy!" Dinah repeated, peering through the wooden slats. Benjamin bent a long time over the edge, staring. Tabatha fidgeted, reluctant to look.
The robin lay on its back, a dejected clump of ruffled feathers. Feet extended, eyes half closed, staring with almost a shocked expression at the sky where it should have been swooping. Singing.
We stood beside the little body and talked a bit. About the God who cares about the lesser things that die flying. (And the people who die trying, I think.) For a heartbeat we remained as still as the robin itself.
Then faith brought up a prayer.
I barely know who uttered it. My daughter and I were two mothers together, watching our beloved offspring grapple with an impossible definition. Death: a terrible stillness. That "wobbin can't fwy" and will never fly again. That kind of lesson demands that a mother talk to Father in heaven - because she knows there are harder ones coming.
"Lord, I think you don't like seeing your little bird like this. She shouldn't be here, and we don't understand why. But we know you see her, and are sorry too. Thank you that other robins still sing. Amen."
The Beans left, satisfied.
One day, they'll understand more about death. All they need to know today is that it happens. That God cares. And birds still sing.
Perhaps that's all any of us need to know. God may tell us the rest - later in the program.
