For visual access, I’m a white transgender man sitting in the front room of my home in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m living on land that is home to the Piscataway people. The sun is starting to set as beams of light hit my face, filling me with warmth on this cold, flurry filled day. I’m wearing a cozy pair of sweat shorts and a black t-shirt.
I’m writing on this winter day to share a story with you. A story about sorrow, joy, life, death, and renewal. A story about me and a Woodcock bird.
I’ve been feeling a bit low energy. A few weeks ago I got hit with a cold and am still recovering. This past week I’ve been engaging in the Jewish grieving ritual called “sitting Shiva” for a dear family friend who laid their mother to rest on Wednesday. One of my takeaways from attending Shiva is that it’s really about letting people be there for you in a time of sorrow. You open your home to the community to gather, eat, share stories, laugh, cry, and pray. As you open your home, you also have the opportunity to open your heart and yourself to really be held and witnessed through the confusing process of death.
As humans we all go through death. From all perspectives — spiritual, religious, and scientific — the truth is none of us really knows or fully understands what happens from life to death. One moment there is life and then there is not.
Yesterday I had a potent experience of death. I was relaxing watching a movie because I was not feeling my best. I gave myself permission to just rest. What happened next felt like slow motion and fast forward at the same time.
All of a sudden I was called to get up and walk out my back door on the coldest, most blustery day of the winter yet. I walked to the wood line on my property, scanning the area, when I was called to connect with a set of bones (I think a deer’s full rib cage) that have laid to rest for a while.
After a quiet moment, I walked just a few steps when all of a sudden I scared a Woodcock. Startled, the bird flew directly into one of the windows to my home and died.
I went to it right away as I watched it take its last moments alive here on earth. Picking up the bird, I sang and made some whistling sounds. Then I went into a bit of shock. I thought to myself, I just killed this beautiful creature. Had I just stayed inside watching my movie this would have never happened.
It felt like a dream. I was just looking at a pile of bones and then I watched this beautiful being go from life to death in a single instance. I then rushed inside to my partner not even knowing what it was that I needed. I felt scared, ashamed, and like maybe, just maybe, I could bring the Woodcock back to life. But that was not the case. I returned outside and placed the being by a tree. I cried and sang and covered it with a cloth. My partner came outside to witness the pain and sadness I was feeling.
Today I asked for closure, and a deeper understanding of the medicine that is here for me in this story. Today I returned to the Woodcock bird and the being offered itself to me, inviting me to clip its wings and pluck its feathers. This may sound a bit gruesome to some, but for me this is what the soul/spirit of this being asked of me.
I cried and sang as I moved through this ritual, thanking this being for its life, beauty, and love. I believe that this being was a mirror of something dying inside me. I have had many deaths of myself in this lifetime and believe that now another part of me is also free.
Recently I’ve been working with clients through distance Reiki and crystal healing sessions that feel connected to this tale of the Woodcock, but that are their own medicine stories for other days. It’s endlessly impactful to experience so many meaningful connections between my clients’ healing sessions and my own.
I trust the processes of healing and understand that death is a part of it all. “Nereus and the Woodcock Bird” will be a story that I forever hold in my heart, and these feathers will be a tool of great strength for me.
