Free at last

I stared up from my hands, remembering Mom always shows up through birds and nature, but nothing came. The wind paused and the chimes kept on singing, but I saw the wind coming through the trees to cause their song and dance. I stood up and walked to the edge of our deck and leaned against the railing. After many moments, I heard their cries above. Two red tailed hawks came from the east. They circled each other in wide circles and came over our neighbor’s house, and over our driveway. They then made a huge circle over our house. Peace fell on me and a smile came across my face, which I did not feel I made happen on my own. It came from deep within, it was as if I were someone else. One of the hawks circled right over me, under the sun, so his whole body, his feathers glowed light red and cream. It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in a long time. I stared up, shielding my eyes from the sun but letting the glow of the sun through the hawk’s feathers ignite my soul and calm my heart. They flew back to the east, but instead of circles, they floated with the wind. It was as if the wind currents were waves. The hawk that had circled over my head, the sun illuminating it’s feathers, floated up, closed its wings and gently floated down then opening its wings. Both bodies moved with the air like Mom and my bodies moved in the waves out past the breakers. She would just go with it. We would bob up and down, one with the sea that stole her heart so many years before that last trip to the ocean before she passed. The ocean then allowed us to take part in it’s magical ebb and flow, it’s rolling, it’s push and pull. I clearly recalled that Mom would always have such a face, either beaming with joy or just peaceful, as if she were finally one with the force her body belonged to. As the hawk rose, topped the air pocket and floated down, I heard a still voice coming from my heart saying, “she’s free from Dad. She’s free from this earth, from cancer, from pain. She protected me, helped me break free in this life, break the cycle, but it took death to set her free. She’s a hawk flying free, playing and relaxing on the waves of air, at one, protected at last from him.