Signs- A Blog by Cassie

PSALM 77:4 You hold my eyelids open;

One day back in March I was visiting Rowyn in the cemetery before I was leaving town for the weekend. I was knelt down beside her, and while I was in a deep conversation with her through tears I started to hear this loud obnoxious squacking bird. I noticed it, but kept talking to her until I could not any longer it was so loud and annoying. I looked up to the tree just to the left of her spot when I saw the bird sitting on a branch looking right at me. I immediately grinned, I knew it was Rowyn. I looked back at her picture on her stone and her smiling face and big eyes came to life. I looked back up and said “Hi Ro, I know that is you now.” It was something so small, but comforting to me. I continued to talk to her after that and when it was time to leave the bird was gone. I remember driving away and noticing these little birds everywhere on my drive. It was just one of those signs. I had told some people about it, they probably thought I was crazy.

From my blogs you can probably see when I have my ups and downs. A couple weeks before our events I was really very down. My loving friend Jen came over (even when I told her she didn’t need to) and brought me a blue stone bird. I told her I loved it, I had just saw it the other day at Hedden’s, and that birds just remind me of Rowyn.

A couple of weeks ago I was at Brynn’s preparing for the big events and loading up trailers. I was in the backyard and I noticed three little birds flying around near me. One had a teal stripe down it’s back. The other two did not. The one with the teal stripe on it’s back landed on the fence just yards away from me. I watched it for awhile, and thought…. Maybe that is Rowyn. I immediately told Brynn of course, and if anyone didn’t know the tiffany blue/teal color is totally Rowyn’s.

We were at the event center setting things up last Friday, when Brynn handed me this cloth wrap bracelet with a silver cross and a bird on it. She said here, this must have been an extra one, you take it. I know who made it (talented Jenni), but I still do not know where it came from. Somehow it made it to the event center with nothing else and Brynn handed it to me. I said… “oh cool, because birds just remind me of Rowyn.”

Last week, I got to daycare to drop off my kids. Their amazing animal loving babysitter asked me if I knew where this animal sanctuary was at that was on my way home. I said yes I knew where it was, but I had never been there. She had a baby bird she found in the yard that could not fly. She looked for it’s nest, waited for it’s mom or another bird but nothing. She kept the bird in a box, and the next thing I knew I was driving slowly, playing soft music for this little bird, trying to comfort it, as I took it to the animal sanctuary to be saved. I thought nothing of it at the time.

The next day, I just kept thinking about this little bird. The man told me that they would take good care of her and that she looked like she was about a week out from being able to fly on her own. I think I started thinking about it again because my youngest son has started to talk and one of his most common words…. Bird. Everytime one flys above us, he points and says bird. I am now convinced, Rowyn shows herself to me in the birds.

The symbolism of taking that bird in to be saved and to learn that she was going to be flying in no time at all, is all too real to me. It was as if she was showing me myself. The littlest things can appear as nothing if you do not take the moments to stop and notice them. I have seen the red tailed hawk, found my share of white feathers, but I know for me…. She is the birds.