I found a dead bird in my front yard the other day.
Normally, I wouldn’t be so caught up on this one animal because to be honest I really don’t like birds (long story) but this particular bird was different.
It started with my cousin’s apparent death that is encroaching more and more rapidly with each day.
My cousin, Zachariah, has been my paralyazed from the neck down since he was seventeen in a motocross accident. At first he was still the same cousin I loved, still able to move around in his electric wheel chair which he would always give me rides on whenever I wanted. He could talk, open his mouth to chew real food, and still be the same Zach that I had looked up to at just six years old.
Until one operation changed all that. It was just supposed to be a simple surgery but instead something went wrong, the doctors did everything they could but the damage had already been done; suddenly he was a bird who couldn’t sing.
Ever since then he has been getting worse. I know I should be grateful he has lived this long, a body can only maintain it’s functions for so long in a situation like Zach’s but I don’t care that he has survived 13 years like this, I want 13 more.
It’s extremely selfish. I know my cousin. He knows that his time is up and as his lungs begin to drowned him in his own saliva he’s finally going to be free of all this pain and hurt that he’s been constantly living in for years. I know he doesn’t blame anyone, he never has, but I know my cousin doesn’t want to live like this anymore.
I should be happy for him though, or at least pretend to be. He has this crazy idea that when he finally passes it’s going to be bliss and peace and he is finally going to go to a place where he can run and jump and talk all he wants, where he can move his legs and arms like he hasn’t been able to do for the past 13 years. I want to believe such a place exists, for his sake if not my own. I want to believe that beyond this life is something out there that is going to bring us the final peace of mind we are all looking for, but I don’t. Not now anyway. Still, if that’s the only thing that will make Zach go happily than I will lie like no other to make sure he keeps believing that up until the very last second. I will pretend that there really is a place where he can be free as a bird.
Except birds die.
Some of them die horrible, tragic deaths like the one in my front yard. He must’ve fallen from a tree above, maybe he was trying to spread his own wings and fly and instead he found himself splattered on my pavement, his gray body mangled and deformed to the point where I wasn’t even sure it was a bird anymore. I keep thinking about the way it would’ve been looking at me if it’s eyes were open and I thank my lucky stars they weren’t. His mouth was gaping open like the creature had actually tried to scream “help me” before it went tumbling down to it’s cemented death below. Zach has been screaming “help me” for the past 13 yrs, except unlike the bird, he wasn’t screaming “help me live” he was screaming “help me die.”
I stared at the poor bird for what must’ve been a good 2o minutes, tears trickling down my face. Before I saw the thing I was able to block this all out, all the memories of my cousin, the fact that I’m never gonna get to see him again or laugh at his jokes. Now all I see is the pain that is coming before death and the gruesome side of it that is going to come afterwards. This bird was never given a chance to live, taken before it’s time was up, just like my cousin. It should have been able to spread it’s wings and fly away from here, go wherever it wanted to go, do whatever it wanted to do. Have kids, start a family, be one with the world.
My cousin will never get that. Any of it.
I was doing so well not to think about all of this too, and I still might have been able to put it off for awhile, but I cannot ignore the dark cloud that hangs over me now, or maybe it’s a flock of birds. All I know is my mind has been on nothing else but this most recent loss of someone else I love.
And all because of one dead bird.
1 comment
(???)