Listen to the birds

On the barn opposite my parent’s bedroom window, hundreds of birds would gather. Maybe drawn by the heat of the house next door. Or perhaps the shelter afforded by the roof. A big hole allowed them easy access under the exposed rafters. Even years later when the barn was repaired and converted to a home, and a gay couple moved in - they’re really lovely though, my mum would say - the birds still came. 

The evening before he died, surrounded by family and close friends in that same bedroom, listening to Elton John through the tinny speaker of my brother’s iPhone, my dad said his last words.

Listen to the birds.

My dad said a few odd things in his last days. I made a list on my notes app.

It’s only paint and wood. 

Fork lift handle.

I don’t want to say goodbye.

Bradley Wiggins is a bloody idiot. 

Sorry.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

What I got to do

To make you love me?

What I got to do

To make you care?

What do I do

When lightning strikes me?

And I wake to find

That you're not there?

Those five letters. That one word. I thought that was it. The reckoning. The closure. The money shot. Until, Listen to the birds.

We didn’t think anything of it at the time. 

He’s confused, love. It’s the morphine. 

He died that night. I held his hand. It was warm and strong still. He stared at the corner of the room, his breath getting shallower and more labored. A death rattle. And then the noise and movement and his grip just stopped. And he looked so peaceful.

For a few moments, time seemed to stretch as the universe opened up, gathered 21 grams of stardust and bathed us all in infinite beauty. I looked into the corner where he’d been staring so intently moments before, half expecting to see him climbing through a tear in reality. Upwards too to the ceiling; was he already up there looking down on us?

What do we do now?

The undertakers arrived 45 minutes later. One of them hadn’t had time to address his bed head. A moment of levity. My mum picked out dad’s final outfit. I don’t remember who dressed him or if I was even there. Some time after, he was on a stretcher, in clothes he didn’t choose, inside a black zippered bag being carried down stairs by men I didn’t know, who had ventured out in the freezing night, leaving loved ones in warm beds at home.

And that’s when it happened.

There are two doors to get out of the house. One at the end of the corridor, that goes past the living room and kitchen, and leads to a porch. And another in the porch itself. The porch door was locked which meant I had to edge alongside my dad and the undertakers to open it. I cursed the color coded locks and security bolts, then stepped outside to let everyone through rather than squeeze back in.

It was a quiet, dark, cold, March morning. You could hear the electric street lights humming and occasional spray from cars traveling on the damp main road not too far from the house. You good?, one undertaker said to the other. A nod, yup. And they carried him out from the home he had lived in for 35 years.

As his body crossed the threshold of the house, the sky cracked grey and orange, my heart exploded and ten thousand birds on the roof of the barn opposite, burst into song.