I'm still choked up trying to think how I can describe it.

Yesterday would have been Dad's 91st birthday. I was attempting to celebrate that last evening by starting to go through the letters he sent Mother during the war. The earliest ones, especially, I was quite taken by the level of passion and the desire that his new wife learn the pleasures of sexual intimacy. This from someone raised in a very strict calvinist household. During the time I knew him he never showed his emotions (although I always knew he loved us).

As I was getting out of my car in the parking garage, I saw a redtailed hawk no more than 50 feet away from me, perched on the side railing. There is a large conservation area nearby. There are too many pigeons in the garage. Still, this was quite extraordinary, and it didn't fly away as I opened the door.

I sat there with the door half open and started to talk to it in the whistling, plaintiff way that a fledgling hawk taught me years ago. The redtail kept peering and peering, trying to figure out where the baby hawk was. Clearly not me. He would look at me and then turn away, looking for the baby hawk.

A woman walked by, between us. The hawk finally flushed, but flew into the garage, made a very large circle, and exited over the same side railing and then dropped down (I was on the fourth floor). I ran to the railing to catch another glimpse, and saw it fly back up to the railing, now only 30 feet from me. I stood there quite a while in plain view of the hawk and whistled to it again. When I was in the car, the lighting was very unfavorable, now it was beautifully lit from the side.

A one year old hawk that had made it through its first perilous winter. It shouldn't have let me be so close. Maybe last summer, but not at this age.

I know hawks very well. I did my graduate work in a raptor rehabilitation program in Minnesota. That's where I learned to talk Baby Hawk Berlitz. That's when the redtail hawk in particular became my soul mate. I have an early addition print hanging next to the dining room table of a fledgling redtail (the plummage is more interesting in black and white than the adult). Dad may have been too blind to really make it out, but he sat next to it every morning and noontime.

As I headed down the escalator of the garage, I could still see the hawk. I thought of Dad and thought if this were a sign it would have been more appropriate on his birthday, yesterday. Then it hit me that today was the two month anniversary of his death (I was the only person with him at the time) and the morning after I had delved into perhaps the most intimate thoughts he had ever shared of himself.

I just can't see this as a coincidence.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2002

Answers

Brooks,

I don't think it was a coincidence either. Maybe your father was trying to show you that he was glad that you got to know him a little better by reading his writings to your mother. Maybe he was just saying "Thank You" for being with him at the end.

I believe.

apoc

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2002

What a touching piece, Brooks! Thanks so much for sharing. This really should be published and shared with a wider audience.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2002

Meemur, I might not have thought much about it, but I remembered Art Bell saying that a few days after his dad died a small, wild bird landed on his deck and spent the day resting there in spite of people moving about. I was with Dad, I was looking for signs. I felt rather cheated at the time that there didn't seem to be any. He just died next to me and that was the end of it.

My parents were in their early 40s when they had me (the youngest of 3 post war boomers). I have regretted that I never knew them in their prime. The redtail would have been the equivalent age of my Dad when I suspect he was his happiest and most hopeful about how things might turn out.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2002

that was beautiful , Brooks!

And I have been having visits from my Dad, too....way too much has come to me since his passing...things that seemed "np way out of bad situations"..are coming to closure all in the best posible way...thinks that come up, I talk to him, and poof there is an answer presented to me, before I even "worry" about it.

He was always one telling me, He had great faith in my ability to do right..and to figure it out myself...only, I think he is helping me now...and in such ways, to let me know..it is also BEYOND coincidence!

the other thing I KNOW....is they that have past..love to be acknowledged verbally!

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2002

I think he was with you too.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2002

goosebumps! Look! All over my arms!

Enjoyable read, Our Miss BrookS. Thank you for sharing.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2002

I believe it, Brooks. And I'll be looking for something similar when my Dad goes. I have a suspicion it might be a goldfinch. We'll see.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2002

Now that I have re-read your post and the responses, I recall a sight we had on our way to my Grandma's funeral. Grandpa had died the year before.

As we were driving out to the church, out in the country up in Minnesota, we were surrounded by lots of woods and farm land. Snow all over, but for the week we were there it did not snow at all. Before we arrived, and after we left, they had week long blizzards.

Anyway, the road was hilly, up and down, up and down, very little traffic. As we were going up a hill, a huge stag came over the top of the rise. Naturally I stopped the car, having never seen one other than on TV. I was driving with my new license then, and we had Uncle Irv's Caprice, all black, 1997.

The stag ran down the middle of the road towards us, and then turned off to our left and jumped the gully by the road and cleared the farmer's fence to land in the field of snow. He then sort of jogged towards the woods on the other side. As he arrived at the woods, a doe came out of the woods to meet him. this buck had a great big set of antlers on him, btw. I don't know how many points, but it was huge.

We sat in the car and watched as the two nuzzled each other, and then they turned and stared at us for a few minutes. Then they turned and sauntered off into the woods. We discussed it all the while it was happening, and then the rest of the way to the chuch yard where the interment service was being held. Turned out the church was just on the other side of the hill we were going up. Everyone else had come from the opposite direction and were there already. It made things a lot easier for us, me in particular, to think that grandma and grandpa were together again, running around the area where they lived and raised their family.

We told several of the family members about what we saw, but it seemed they weren't to into it, if you know what I mean. No one saw the stag run by the church, and he had to run on the road there cuz that is where we saw him come from. I mean, it wasn't but a couple hundred yards more before turned into the church lot, and the service was outside with a view of the road. Strange...

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2002