The Birds of Grief

It would be remiss of me not to come here at this time of year and talk about the daffodils. Bang on schedule, they are beginning to emerge from the damp earth. We planted those daffodils in March 2009, the week we found out we were pregnant with Angus. We hoped they would make it, just like we hoped he would. Both continue to bloom beautifully, year after year.

The daffodils of course signify that Grief Season is upon us. I talk about it every year, I don't really need to cover the same old ground again. Nothing really changes, though this year everything looks a little different.

There is another marker each year that reminds me the difficult days are just around the corner and that's the birds, or The Birds of Grief as I've come to call them in the dark reserves of my mind.

I'm no nature buff, but I think they are the Currawong (Google could probably tell me, if I could be bothered to look them up). They have a pretty and distinctive song, and around mid July each year, when we hit the half way point of winter, I begin to hear them.

In the winter of 2008, I heard them a lot. In the first weeks of winter, the house was quiet as we waited for our baby to arrive. I was home on maternity leave, lounging about, stroking my bump and I heard them. Weeks later when we returned home from hospital without her, the house was quieter than it had ever been before, and I think that's all I heard. The following year they were just as loud as I sat through the final month of Angus' pregnancy, frozen in fear and hoping beyond hope we'd have the complete opposite pregnancy outcome.

The last few years, the birds have been harder to hear. The children drown out their songs, which is a lovely situation to find myself in. But this year, though the children seem to be louder than ever before, I've really noticed them again, and it is both comforting and sobering. August is nearly here and our girl will be five years gone. Five whole years.

This time of year is always a time of quiet reflection and sombreness. And while that is still true, this year it is also a time of great change and upheaval - 80 per cent of our belongings now reside in cardboard boxes in a storage facility around the corner, while we ride out these final two weeks with our furniture, clothes and bare essentials before we move to the house of our dreams, just a kilometre or so across town.

The daffodils are coming, The Birds of Grief are singing, August is nearly here yet when it does arrive, we wont even be here, in our first home, the children's only home and the only place we've ever known true brokenheartedness. We'll be starting fresh with a whole new 12 month cycle of grief ahead of us, hoping the birds reside in the trees in our new neighbourhood and that the daffodils we plan to plant there will bloom on schedule again next year.