More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.

Forrest came and visited this afternoon. His ma died recently — cancer — and we all talked about how he’s faring.

This passage stuck out to me just now because of something he said. In the days after the funeral he and a friend of his ma’s were both independently ‘visited’ by birds that seemed somehow to carry the spirit of his mother. The friend was even gifted a leaf by said bird.