A Feathered Ferryman

It was a cold February morning when we brought my mother home for the last time.

“It could be weeks or maybe just days,” they’d said.

“There is nothing else we can do for her,” they’d said.

You see, we had brought my mother home to die. Two of my sisters and I took up the spare rooms in her house while the third checked in from her home nearby. We were all home together for the first time since our father died nearly fifteen years earlier.

Though my one sister and I were still regular visitors to the farm we still called home, my other two sisters had moved away and only returned when mother fell into an unexpected coma.

There was a division between the four of us, old wounds that never healed and though we tried to remain civil in our mother’s home, it was far from a welcome reunion between the two estranged sisters and the two of us who had remained close to home.

When I wasn’t sitting with my mother, I spent a substantial portion of my time in my assigned room or outdoors, letting nature soothe an unsettled soul, just as I had for the many years I'd lived on my family's farm.

Our old barn sat across the gravel drive that ran between Mom’s house and the pasture where our grandfather’s cattle had once roamed. My sisters are a fair bit older than I am and so, as a child, I was often left to my own devices to play. I spent a lot of my time in that barn. There were cows and chickens that frequented it back then.

A cardinal used to hang about, as well. My mother said it was my grandmother, who used to live on the property. She believed her mother had been reincarnated and that bird was the proof that she remained nearby.

The cardinal often visited my mother’s home, perching in the fruit trees my father had planted and sometimes on our car mirrors to bend and look at herself while we were parked in the drive.

But the barn was long abandoned by everything but a few families of field mice.

Or so I thought.

As I stepped into the night air to walk along the gravel road just past it, I heard the distinct screech of what could only be a barn owl. I stopped to listen but was met with only silence.

“Have you come for her?” I asked.

There was no reply.

The following day, I made my way back to the barn in search of the owl I’d heard. I found nothing and could only assume it was not nested there or was hidden in portions of the dilapidated barn that were no longer safe for me to explore.

That night, I heard the screech of the barn owl once again.

I was sure the feathered ferryman had come to help my mother cross the threshold, as we’d never had a barn owl inhabit the old wood and tin structure for as long as I could recall. There were plenty of owls, but I’d never heard a barn owl before we brought Mom home.

I was sure he was here for her and that comforted me. She wouldn’t go into her last dark night alone.

Days passed. And then weeks. Still, the barn owl remained. As did my mother.

Each evening, I returned to the barn to speak with the barn owl, but he was silent. It was only when I left that I would once again hear his familiar screech, letting me know he was there, letting me know that he was waiting patiently.

Hospice came. They told us it would be hours and I wondered if the barn owl was ready for the trip. The hour finally came and within an hour of that, a long black hearse arrived to retrieve my mother. We stood, my sisters and I, in the graveled drive outside her home and watched as it pulled away.

Nearby, I heard the screech of the barn owl and looked in his direction. Above the barn, large cream and white wings rose into the air, the security light illuminating the barn owl as it emerged from the shadows and flew into the night. He had taken her and now his job was done.

I knew he would not return.

The following morning seemed different—solemn and unbearable. The knowledge that I was now a parentless adult child weighed heavily on my mind. I knew that the pain of never seeing my mother again would leave a scar on my heart that would remain for a lifetime.

I returned to the barn. It would be the last time I ventured inside. I stood in the hallway and cried alone, expressing my pain in the solitude I had always sought from the old barn in days long past.

As I exited, I looked up at the old elm that stood nearby. On a branch, looking down at me, sat a cardinal. As I watched, she was joined by another, and they flew away.

I smiled to myself, knowing that everything was going to be okay.