I believe signs and messages come to us in different ways. For me, it’s usually an animal or bird or insect of some kind that shows up. So, a few weeks ago, when a hummingbird–often seen as a symbol for joy–zoomed so close to my head I had to duck, I thought about the connection between joy and sorrow.
It had been three months since I lost a beloved friend and writing partner to a heart attack, and a few days since an uncle I had dearly loved succumbed to cancer. Two other important men in my life were facing chronic health issues and my ex-husband—the man with whom I share a daughter—had almost died. On my birthday.
On the other hand, I am among the lucky few who, at my age, still have two living parents. But the men in my life seem to be leaving. And someday I’ll start losing the women, too. It’s a part of being human we will all experience as we age; it’s just new to me.
I will always think of the summer of 2023 as a season of sadness. This year, as the autumn equinox loomed closer, I could see signs of depression in my eating, sleeping and thinking patterns. I began to argue with friends and lose patience over little things.
When I flew to St. Louis for a visit near the end of September, two of my high school besties listened and empathized—they too are watching their loved ones age, even as their own lives and priorities change with each passing year. But it was a group of writers living within my parents’ senior community who told me the truth about loss in ways I could understand and accept.
I had asked them whether losing friends and family members ever gets easier. All four of the people sitting around that table shook their heads “no” as they looked at me with compassion, resignation and empathy. I wanted to know how they cope.
It’s not that it ever gets easier, they agreed, but at their age—70s, 80s and beyond—one comes to expect it. One woman was losing a partner who was dying from the same disease that had taken her husband. Another person had lost a son . . . the good news for him was that he was remarrying. But they all had deep and wide experience with loss. I felt lucky—and grateful—to be exposed to such wisdom. Then we forgot our troubles and shared a delicious bottle of red wine.
Returning home, I realized I had been so distracted during the summer that not once had I pulled out my fishing kayak—a spiffy little boat equipped with a comfortable seat and pedals that reach up through the bottom of the boat to meet my feet, enabling me to move through the water—and fish—without using a paddle. So, two days before temperatures were scheduled to drop from the high 80s to the mid-60s, I launched my kayak and slipped through crystal clear lake water toward the dock where people of all ages catch bass, sunfish and crappies.
That day the only fish biting were baby bass—even the seasoned fisherman standing on the dock wasn’t catching anything. But in my kayak, I could move to another dock, fish in deeper water, or slide quietly closer to shore.
I made my decision when I saw a beautiful heron sitting on a thick branch of a tree that had fallen into the water and remained mostly submerged. Fish hang out near underwater structures and the heron had found a good spot—if she was finding fish, I knew I would, too.
As I moved toward her, we watched each other closely—I thought she would startle and fly off, but she didn’t. My kayak actually came within a few yards of her before I turned my boat away—it’s not polite to invade someone else’s fishing spot. But she kept her eye on me. When I felt a small tug, I tried to be quiet as I began reeling in a small bass. When I finally pulled it up, the heron watched the fish emerge at the end of my line and only rose from her perch when I tossed it back in.
Of course, that didn’t end her fishing excursion—within a few seconds she had landed in an even better area, filled with submerged trees. And she started catching fish. She must have known I wouldn’t be able to navigate her new territory because she stopped watching me.
But I had learned something. For those few hours on the water, I had forgotten my sadness. I had connected eyeball to eyeball with a magnificent bird. I had experienced the last warmth of summer . . . been given a day I won’t soon forget. And I thought about the messages each bird had conveyed. “Don’t dive so deeply into your emotions that you miss the experience this moment offers,” warned the heron. And the hummingbird?
“Your sorrow is your joy unmasked,” wrote Lebanese-American writer and poet Kahlil Gibran. The more sorrow one experiences, the more joy one can feel. That was the hummingbird’s message.
Like everyone else I know, I will certainly experience more and deeper sorrow in the coming years. Each time it happens, I will be challenged to remember that the loved one I’m missing is someone who once brought great joy. And that if I wait patiently and look carefully, a different source of beauty—and happiness—is not far behind.