Safely Across the Rainbow Bridge ~ Flashback!

Friday, 12 October 2018
I posted on my Facebook page and on our community Facebook page am:
PLEASE HELP BABY BIRD... Does anyone know someone in our area who knows how to rear a baby bird?  A little dove fell out of its’ nest during the night... had a big ball of poop the size of a small chicken’s egg stuck to its tail end feathers, so I had to pick it up to cut that off. Its’ mother sat nearby on the wall calmly watching me, but I haven't seen her since I left the baby exactly where I found it in my herb pot under the tree.  Later in the day, I went out and gave it water to drink, and now I've cooked mielie meal in case I need to feed it (I don’t have seeds).  Tomorrow I have to be out most of the day to visit with my friend for us to go and choose our prize-winning clothes.  A huge rainstorm is predicted to arrive from tonight and all day tomorrow, so it can’t be left alone in the pot.  Please someone, help (Would you be prepared to take the little bird in for the day even, to at least give it water and try to feed it to keep it alive until I'm back).
 
The little bird was about the size of my fist… only just starting to develop its flight feathers.  It was still very much reliant on its mother and needed to get back to its’ nest, but it was too high up and therefore impossible to get it back there without a very long ladder which I didn’t have.  My neighbours were working on a car out the front all day, so I believed that their presence is what kept the mother bird from returning.
 
During the day, one of my Facebook friends put me onto someone who gave me a contact in my area.  A bird-lady came to pick up the little bird much later in the day.   But all through the day while I was still trying to find help for the little one, I was worrying about the impending storm and the baby bird alone in my herb pot under the tree that it fell out of.  I struggled greatly as I kept checking very quietly through the net curtains, (without moving them)… hoping that I would see the mother bird coming to feed her baby. 
 
My nurturing side was stretched to my limits… I had no way to save the little bird from its loneliness.  I knew that if I interfered with it again, it would have no chance of its’ mother’s return. 
 
“Why had she not come back?” I agonized… “Had I missed her in-between my checks through the curtain?” 
 
I worried all day long, that the cat that frequently visits our yard, would return.  This made me feel very disturbed that the little bird was in danger.  I tried to get my work done but was far too distracted by my worries to do much.  A heavy, chilly wind also picked up during the day and I knew that the little bird must have been cold without its mother.  Late afternoon, when I couldn’t bear it anymore, I went and fed the baby a little mielie-meal… not very successfully… it only swallowed less than a pea size… its crop was completely empty at the time, so my fears that the mother bird had not been there to feed it were confirmed.  I surrounded it with dried leaves to try and keep it warm and gave it some water which it drank thirstily.  I dropped birdseed that I had asked another neighbour for into the herb pot around the little bird in the hopes that it would be big enough to eat, or that its’ mother would be attracted by the seed to her baby. 
 
It was late in the day, and arrangements had been made… the bird-lady was already on her way to pick up the baby, and by then, the neighbours who had been out the front most of the day, had finally gone inside and it was at last quiet and still outside, except for the icy wind…….. and lo and behold, the mother dove then returned to her baby, and even another bigger dove was with her, so I presume that was the daddy.  They jumped into the herb pot and the mother dove ate and fed her baby over and over and while she was eating, the baby snuggled under the warmth of her wings. 
 
I cannot begin to tell you what a dilemma that created for my mommy heart, because I knew that soon her baby would be taken away for the sake of its’ safety, because the big storm was still threatening. 
 
The mother kept flying up to her nest and calling her baby which kept jumping up the edges of the pot trying to get to her, but to no avail.  I worried that it would fall out again.  It was getting dark and I could see that the mother bird was totally flustered, not knowing what to do to help her baby up. 
 
Once during the day, the baby had managed to jump over the edge of the pot which was about a meter off of the ground, and had landed in another container on the ground that had about an inch of water in it… so the poor thing had been in that water for anything up to an hour when I found it and put it back in the herb-pot.  I just didn’t know what else to do!  All I knew, was that it had to be ‘alone’ where the mother bird last saw it for it to have the best chance of survival.  The cold bricks on the ground below would not have been a suitable place for the little one.  At least the pot with soil and herbs in it provided more shelter than the bricks would have.
 
The mother and father weren’t with the baby when the bird-lady arrived, but by then, my heart was breaking, and I felt so confused about what was right and what was wrong for the little bird.  The bird-lady agreed that it was not possible to get the baby back up to its nest and promised to do her best to take care of it.  As I handed the baby over to the lady, I experienced a flashback of note and burst into helpless sobbing.  I tried to explain to her what I thought was happening, but I was crying so uncontrollably that I don’t know if I made any sense at all.  She was very compassionate about my state and I felt extremely comforted by her gentle way of dealing with what she had not expected to happen.  I literally cried as if a loved one had just died…
 
I was grieving a very painful loss from my past… an absolute sense of helplessness…
 
When I later pondered on what had happened during the flashback, I knew exactly where it came from in my past.  I had somehow connected the helplessness I had felt all day long for the little bird, with the helplessness I felt as a child, being unable to rescue or help my little sister when she was being abused.  It’s all a very long story that I share in my book, and also try to explain in a little therapy story I once wrote that I hope will be published someday soon.  The title of that little book is, “Escape from the Violent Storms”.
 
As part of my unedited introduction to this therapy story, I wrote: ©
Patty tells her story in a metaphorical style which is indicative of the creative mindset she developed to help her survive over the years.
 
All through the years of her life, Patty was never able to find the sad little girl who cried mournfully in the haunted mansion, and she was never quite sure who the little girl might be. I have wondered (as I’ve gone through therapy in my adulthood and learned to understand things a little better), if perhaps the sad little girl could have been Patty’s own unhappy and frightened inner-child relentlessly crying out for help and love from a deep, dark, broken place that still existed inside of her adult self. Another thought on the sad little girl’s mournful wails may possibly have been haunting memories that Patty had stored in her mind during states of dissociation after being raped by her stepfather and placed alone in a bath to wash all his evidence off, and then hearing her little sisters cries perhaps as she too suffered at the cruel hands of their stepfather, or, if it was indeed her sister’s cries, they may have been a desperate intended plea for Patty to come do something to help save her, but Patty couldn’t at the time, due to having escaped from her own sufferings by dissociating, to preserve her ‘self’, therefore not being able to come back quickly enough to rescue her sister.
 
I will probably never know, because all through my life, the sad little girls crying has always been just too distant for me to ever find her so that I could see who she was and rescue her! I just haven’t been able to do it on my own, and it was only through the intensive therapy process that I have been so blessed to receive over the last few years that the sad little girl eventually stopped crying and Patty was finally able to stop searching for her.
 
As part of my actual unedited therapy story, I wrote: ©
Often when Patty was feeling very lonely and sad, she would start to hear a mournful, muffled, bitter, crying voice of a small child echoing through the darkness from somewhere in the mansion. She wanted to help the melancholy child, but no matter how far she searched down the dark and frightening corridors, she could never find the right door that would lead to where the sad child was.
 
Sometimes Patty was sure she was close to finding the crying child, but when she tried to open the tall black doors, they were always locked, and when she banged hard on the doors and called to the child, the crying would stop for a while, and then return as if in a far distance, echoing again with an eerie sadness, from some other dark and lonely place in the mansion.
 
Deep down, I think that I know that it was my little sister who I could not save from her sufferings.  I was too small, or too far away in my dissociation-escape to be able to do anything to rescue her from my stepfather, and if she was being beaten by our mother, I had no chance at all of rescuing her… I was too small and far too afraid to dare to defy mother during or even after one of her vicious attacks on us… and so, as a result, I was haunted repeatedly for almost the entire 50 years of my life by the little girls wailing cries, because, I had no way to ever reach her, to help her.  I know for sure in my heart, that the flashback was a result of this when I handed that little bird over to the bird-lady.  A sense of abject helplessness… yet, even though it triggered overwhelming and uncontrollable tears, I somehow knew, that this lady was here to help… I was not alone… the little bird was now in good, genuinely loving hands and would be safe and warm.  
 
I wonder now, was this a healing opportunity for me.  A moment in time, where someone had come to our rescue…  my sister would be safe and warm… she would be loved and protected from the darkness of the night, the abject aloneness and the frightening storm. 
 
The next morning the bird-lady called to let me know, that although the little bird seemed to be quite strong when she took it, it had died during the night, still in the little ball of feather’s position that it had gone to sleep in.  She did not expect that it had suffered before it died, thankfully.  But on inspecting it after she’d found it dead, she said that there was bruising to its abdomen which had probably been caused in the fall from its’ nest the night before.  And she also suggested that the ball of poop that I’d found stuck to it was not natural and that maybe there was some other problem that caused the little one to die.
 
Hearing that the little bird had died did not evoke any kind of undue sadness for me… The little bird was free.  It would no longer have to suffer anything this world had to throw at it.  It did not die alone outside in the dark and storms of life… it died in a loving, nurturing, warm place… I felt relieved.  Of course, there was some sadness… I felt sad for the mother bird who had come back to feed it the evening before and had tried so hard to call it back to its’ nest.  I would have liked to have heard that it made it… so, I can’t imagine anyone would understand fully… but I felt very relieved also, that it was no longer in danger from this cruel world… the little bird was now safe in its place of death.
 
Another little creature across the Beautiful Rainbow-Bridge, which will greet me someday when I get there.  I too will be free and won’t be alone when I die… I have friends in Heaven.
 
Thank you for sharing with me today.
 
~  Panayiota.