a life in progress
By
Ray
Lucas
If You See A Robin In Your
Yard Eating Cotton Candy –
Don’t Shoot!
“R
OBINS ARE SPECIAL BIRDS,” my grandma
took great care to tell me one spring day as I wielded my
new BB gun around the yard as a boy. “I really don’t want
you shooting anything in my yard, and especially not a
robin.” I had received a BB gun for Christmas the winter before, and she was
probably worried I would take aim at her beloved red-bellied birds in the yard.
Grandma understood the temptation for a boy to shoot cans, telephone
poles and even birds. Like the fictional Atticus Finch, she seemed to be saying,
“Shoot all of the other birds you like, if you can hit them, but not my robins.”
I knew from that young age that robins were special.
Because of her love for them, I have always associated robins with her, even
after her death. My mom was so like my grandma that I also came to associate
robins with my mom after her passing when I was in college.
I now live in our 120-year-old family home place, where both my grandma
and mom grew up. I am convinced that each spring the two return as robins
to watch over me. I most often see them while cutting grass, hopping around
the yard or singing from a tree limb. It’s like they have come home to check in
on me and see how their family has grown as my children play about the yard.
Robins make me smile in a way that no other animal can.
I am not really a superstitious person who believes in visits from the afterlife.
I don’t normally go in for spirits and friendly ghosts, but in matters of robins
I guess I feel differently. I have known others who associate past loved ones
with something tangible and physical in their lives: a butterfly in the wind, a
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EXTOL • JUNE/JULY 2017
special rose bush, a hawk on a pole, a significant song, or a piece of jewelry.
Maybe I’m superstitious after all.
I once read an article about how people die three separate deaths. One is
our actual death that comes with obituaries, flowers and funerals where our
loved ones gather to mourn our passing. The second death is when the last
person who knew us personally while we were alive passes away. When they
die, there is no remaining person on the planet that can say they knew us
while we were alive.
I KNEW FROM THAT
YOUNG AGE THAT
ROBINS WERE SPECIAL.
The final death, is the moment in the vast future when the last records of
our life disappear. Our tombstone is reduced by the elements and any written
record of our life – journals, birth records, newspapers – are lost. Perhaps my
stories in Extol will prolong my third death by several thousands of years, but