He Followed Us to France

Another story arrived this week.

A little robin has finally found its new home in France.

After a long and exhausting move for its owner, everything is beginning to settle, and when she sent me photographs showing where her robin had landed, I paused. There it was, sitting quietly in a beautiful old stone cottage in France. But it wasn't really the photograph that made me stop.

It was what she told me afterwards.

The robin is in memory of her dad. She would often see a robin when she visited the crematorium, but since moving to France she misses being able to go and see him. Now she has her little robin with her instead. She told me:

“This makes up for it, as I feel he's here with me now.”

And then something else has started happening.

While she's been outside tending to her plants, a white feather has been appearing in the garden.

She said she feels as though her dad has followed them to France and is happy for them.

That one got me. I miss my parents.

I miss the comfort that comes from simply knowing your family is there. I miss what could have been, and sometimes I find myself wandering into all the what ifs before rather abruptly pulling myself back, because I know disappearing down that road does me no good.

Perhaps that's partly why these stories affect me as much as they do.

I can't make grief disappear and I can't fill the space that somebody has left behind. But somehow this little thing that began on my kitchen table can travel hundreds of miles and give a stranger a moment of comfort, knowing that makes me pause and think that perhaps this is all good.

It's quite remarkable that we can experience grief in such similar ways, yet somehow believe it is unique to us. That no one could really understand the pain of being the one left behind.

And perhaps they can't.

But there is something quite remarkable about a little robin.

It doesn't say, “I understand.”

It simply says,

“I know.”