december momentarias

 

Twas in the bleak mid winter.

I mean yesterday.

I was returning from church where I'd been praying for an aunt who has just died.

As I drove up the avenue to the old homestead, a robin flew from the hedge and landed directly in front of the car.

I wound down the window and called: "Howya Robin."

He showed no interest in moving.

I got out of the car with the engine still running.

The robin pecked about happily close to my feet, still directly in front of the car.

The behaviour was unusual enough to make me think.

I wondered could the bird be bringing a greeting by the grace of God from Aunty Eileen.

Something similar had happened a few years ago with the death of an Uncle.

As I drove down the same avenue, behind schedule and in a hurry, heading to church for the posthumous remembrance known in Ireland as a Month's Mind, a dove had landed directly in front of the car.

He was so close and disinclined to move that I was afraid I'd run over him. Like the robin, he'd stayed where he was until I got out of the vehicle, said a few words, and gently moved him on.

I thought the creature might have been from Uncle Bernard whose remembrance I had been going to.

I ended up being late for the prayer service because of the dove.

And now today's robin from Aunty Eileen.

I remember the psychologist Victor Frankl recounting in his book Man's Search For Meaning that on a freezing winter's day in the Concentration Camp where he'd been doing forced labour, a little bird had alighted near him and looked at him fixedly.

He'd instantly thought of his wife who unbeknownst to him, had just died in an adjoining Concentration Camp for women.

It is an opprobrious and dangerous thing to try and contact the dead through mediums but I do believe that God may permit a blessed greeting from a loved one via the birds or even sometimes in dreams.

These things call for care and discernment.

Uncle Bernard's wife Mary was startled to find a robin in her house the Christmas after the Uncle died.

The robin was perched beside a photo of Uncle Bernard and Aunty Mary.

Again the coincidence was enough to make me wonder.

Last word to the husband of a woman who a few years ago was thinking of setting up a restaurant cafe and cookery school in Kilcullen but was having doubts about the project.

She told me that while she dithered over what to do, a robin came to her windowsill and she felt that the robin had somehow been sent by her recently deceased father and that he was telling to her to take a chance on the new business.

Her husband was with us in the kitchen when she told me the story.

"What do you think Tom?" she asked him.

"Ah Siobhan," he said consolingly, "sure the hedge is full of fucken robins."