January 14 2016

It was just after sunrise as I watched a snow-white barn owl drift slowly down the length of the field from the comfort of my warm bed. Wings spread wide, flying about six feet above the frosty grass, she momentarily acknowledged me as she searched for her next meal. "This has got to mean something." I thought to myself. "Maybe she's finally ready to release me from the curse."

There was an eerie beauty to the scene. Her white face ringed by a flame point halo, her peircing black and gold eyes focused on me for but a second, snowy down flecked with soft ash and fire colored - feathered jewels. I sat facing east as the sun began to climb over the horizon, the field was aglow with new light, hoarfrost clinging to long grass stems set to sparkling wildly by the barely risen sun. The air smelled frozen, even from inside the window and it encouraged the aroma wafting from a mug of hot coffee I was holding to envelope me entirely, like a warm, cozy blanket starting from my fingertips. I let it all wash over me, not knowing then how many thousands of times I would replay that scene in my mind over the coming years. It felt like magic. It felt hopeful, like change was on the horizon and this owl was a messenger from the Gods.

I clung to the moment, to the vision, until she disappeared into the evergreens that hedged the northern border of the field. I heard a small voice inside my head say "take very good care of yourself today."

All of a sudden I was transported in memory, back nine years, to a fateful evening in the summer of 2007, in Oregon. I was riding in the passenger seat of an SUV full of rowdy, drunk twenty-somethings, as it sped down the back roads towards town. Obnoxious, blaring music and loud laughter filled the car, my best friend Anna was the driver. We were carefree and invincible, gliding smoothly around bends, through the woods, swiftly over the rugged pavement, when out of nowhere something big slammed into the windshield with a heart-stopping thud. Loud enough to elicit gasps out of everyone in the car, except one girl in the back seat who shrieked shrilly.

"What was that?" Anna asked as she continued to drive along, suddenly extremely sober. "I think it was a barn owl." I replied, a sinking feeling in my stomach. "That's really bad Anna, we should go back. See if it survived." I said as my skin began to prickle, knowing full well it had not. She slowed the SUV to a crawl, ignoring the protests from the back seat.

She turned the car around. We searched both sides of the road and beyond as she drove painstakingly slowly back to the spot where it had happened. It was dusk and there was no trace of the big white owl. It must have gone back into the woods. "I think that bird just tried to commit suicide on your windshield." A male voice from the back seat offered up sarcastically, neither of us were amused. We just looked at each other sadly, questioningly, quietly shrugged one shoulder each towards each other - as was our frequent habit, turned the car back towards town and drove on a little more thoughtfully.

Anna and I considered ourselves very witchy. Clinging to pagan ritual was how we survived private catholic school together. We even called ourselves "Earth Goddess Sisters" Anna being a Taurus and I a Virgo, along with our third, a Capricorn girl named Natalie, who completed our circle (she wasn't with us that night.) As earth signs, we grounded ourselves in nature and spirituality and we both knew that barn owls were an omen of death, transformation and rebirth associated heavily with the future and spiritual foretelling.

The fact that we had just destroyed one weighed heavily on me. A signal I couldn't ignore. That night my dreams were interrupted by the sound of beating wings and an image of death itself appreared to me, pointing a bony finger and screeching "I choose you for retribution. You took one of mine. Now you will pay." A curse that settled heavily into my bones.

Shortly after that, in a seemingly unrelated occurence, a quinquagenarian Moroccan fortune teller told me that I was about to experience nine years of life altering devastation. As we sat on lush pillows in an open-air kitchen overlooking the sparkling ocean and lush green coffee fields of Pahoa, Hawaii and snacked on fresh fruit, charcuterie, cheese and wine, I wanted to brush her prediction away. The sun was shining, my belly was full, life was good.

Although it was hard to take her seriously in that moment, I bristled as my mind raced back to the owl accident.

"If that is what fate has in store for me, then there is no escaping it." I lazily mused. A single guitar played a lilting tune in the background.

Little did I know, that winter everything about my charmed life would change and her prediction would indeed come to pass.

Nine years of 'life altering devastation' and loss with a death and a barn owl at each anchoring point, marking them like bookends.

Midway through a fairly average day in November of 2007 I recieved a phone call from my dad that knocked my world off its axis. "Your brother didn't make it. He's gone. My precious boy is gone." His grief-stricken words reverberated through my being, shaking me to my core. My little brother had both a seizure disorder and an addiction problem that when combined had proven fatal. He had tried to get his life together, spent time in rehab, was living clean and sober, but too late for his fragile body. Irreversible damage had been done to his brain by both nature and drugs, and one day he short circuited and went out like a light. His death changed everything.

Everything I had believed in and trusted collapsed around me. He and I were best friends and family, we were supposed to be there for each other forever, long after our parents had grown old and left us. In an instant he was gone. Suddenly I felt alone in the world and it became a frightening place.

I searched for meaning and security in all the wrong places. While my girlfriends were off living their best lives, so so far away from me, I was spiraling out of control with nothing and no one to ground me. No vice could fill the hole in my heart that my brother's death had left. Not cigarettes, not alcohol, not sex. My identity shifted as well, no longer a 'big sister' and suddenly exceptionally lonely.

Because I had nothing to live for, I was easily distracted by each shiny thing that passed my way. I was wayward and lost, drifting aimlessly through life half numb. I found temporary solace in one particular shiny distraction that took me away from the islands that I called home and into the giant redwoods of California. I felt at peace briefly surrounded by the massive, ancient trees. Like maybe I could make a home there. They breathed life back into me. Then I discovered a new life growing within.

As my baby grew bigger, I found direction, purpose. But it was just the two of us, alone in the world. I lived for her but my heart was still broken and I often forgot to take care of myself on the most fundamental level. I forgot to eat and became sick. When my daughter was born, she weighed five pounds and fit into my cupped hands. With time, love and nourishment, she grew.

Now back in Oregon in 2010, I met three other women with babies her age and we became like sisters. For the first time in years, I felt anchored in community. I met a partner and had another child in 2012, a son. I believed that we would be a family. It was my dearest hope to create peace and a sanctuary for my heart and my children. To be able to foster love, connection and stability, which I still had not found since losing my brother. But my son's father was not the man I originally believed him to be.

The abuse started slowly. In the beginning it was emotional in nature. Little things that were easy to ignore, actions, words, behaviors that made me think twice, but I let them go, striving for wholeness. Later he became bolder, more publicly aggressive towards me. Saying demeaning things in front of others, exhibiting angry outbursts, drawing the wrong types of attention wherever we would go until I stopped going places with him. I was isolated so it was easy for him to become physically abusive towards me when the mood struck, because there were no witnesses. It turned out that freedom was what he valued the most so I gave that gift to him in 2015. In a push for preservation, to save my own and my children's lives, I grew in strength and resiliency and drew upon them until I was brave enough to break free from his shackles.

Just before I did, I recieved a reminder from the universe that life is short.

My oldest brother, my protector, the one who wanted me to tell him where that sorry, good for nothing ex- was living so that he could "take care of him" properly, was struck down by a heart attack. He left behind three beautiful, young daughters and an already heart-broken sister.

I wasn't sure if I was going to survive but somehow, I did. My heart kept breaking, but I kept breathing even when it felt like the air was being crushed out of my lungs by the weight of loss. I sought refuge and comfort in the knowledge that life would change. Was always changing. I could change. I could make different decisions and become a better person. More present, more aware, more responsible. I had already proved to myself that I was stronger than I had imagined. I could grow and learn from my mistakes. I was determined to do so. Life could get better. It had to. Even if I had to do it alone. Even when my family members, all of whom I loved so dearly, were growing fewer in number. I had another family to live for, one I had created. My children. They were worth everything. I had to survive for them. I had to create a better life for the three of us. I had to outlive this curse.

Back in the present (2016), I sat crisscross on the cold tiles of my bathroom floor filing my nails. I debated pouring myself a glass of wine but decided against it, and made myself hot tea instead. I thought about the barn owl that had drifted so serenely over the field that morning and prayed that it was an omen for rebirth. That my trials were - at long last - coming to an end. It had been nine years since my little brother Jordan had died, and one year since my oldest brother Shawn had died. A whirlwind of outrageous and tremendous growth and death that no one so young should have to live through, and now that I was thinking about it - isn't that what she had said so long ago? - The fortune teller - Nine years? My mind wandered. I was so ready to put that part of my life behind me! I was making different choices now, including ignoring my urge for a nightly glass of wine which had become habitual, but felt emotionally stunting lately.

I could hear my children playing in the other room. I had recently ended a phone call with my dad. We were supposed to meet at the barn so the kids could ride his horses but I had politely declined tonight because they seemed like they just needed to be home. Again, making new choices, trying to step away from my people pleasing tendencies, seeking balance between 'fun' and 'necessary,' where 'fun' often led to burn-out. Trying to focus on me and the kids and what was going to be best for the three of us moving forward as I navigated so much heartbreak, loss, grief, and suffering, including my failed relationship, which felt crushing at only thirty-one years old. In the beginning, it took nearly every ounce of my energy and concentration to make those kinds of decisions - ones that were not self-defeating. But I was learning. Besides, I had spent the entire day before that with my dad. I loved spending time with him and I also appreciated that he was understanding of my fragile feelings and desire not to do anything extra today.

I hung up the phone and reminded myself "don't drink, take very good care of yourself today." After I finished my nails, I checked in on the kids who were settling into their new room at our new home and I began thinking about dinner. It was probably going to be mac and cheese with frozen veggies again. The kids loved that, and I could easily afford it on my now 'single' income. "Hhmmm.....maybe we should have gone to the barn after all. My dad probably would have invited us to dinner." I thought to myself.

Knowing the position we were currently in, and being very supportive of me rescuing myself from it, he often fed us. Or at least invited us to dinner. I was grateful. We didn't need a hero, but we did need to eat.

I went to pick up my phone to call him and it rang in my hand.

We had the kind of bond where that happened to us frequently, one would be thinking about the other and then the other would call. I was surprised when I answered and it was my mom calling from my dad's phone. My mom and I didn't have the closest relationship.

"Your dad is going to the hospital and I am on my way there, you should come too."

What? Fuck! This was the phone call I had been both expecting and dreading for weeks. Somehow, I knew it was coming, and here it was. I could see it in his demeanor. He had been changing. Fuck.

"I literally just talked to him like half an hour ago." I said. "What happened?"

"I don't know yet." She paused, then went on; "When I got home, he was sitting in his car on the street. I thought he was parking because the brake lights were on, so I drove up the driveway, parked and went inside. When he didn't come in after a few minutes I went out to check on him. All the doors were locked and I had to get one of the neighbors to help me. He was just unconscious in his car. Now he's on the way to the hospital. Will you come?" She rarely made requests of me.

"Yes!" I replied.

"That fucking owl." I thought as I got off the phone and raced around frantically trying to breathe and prepare myself for...I don't know what. "I guess she's not quite done with me yet."

As I drove to the hospital, I thought back over the past couple of weeks. My dad had been tending to the dead. The one-year anniversary of my oldest brother's death was just one week away and my dad had placed three large easels in his bedroom, one covered in pictures and mementos from my oldest brother's life. One covered in pictures and mementos from my youngest brother's life. He had been gone for nine years now. I had a suspicion that losing two children was too much for him to bear, and it didn't help that his beloved only sister, my aunt, had also died just four months ago. Her pictures covered the third easel. My dad was treading water in a bog of grief.

He spent more time communing with them than he did in the land of the living these days, retreating to his room every afternoon to take long naps and stare at the pictures, lost in thought. Reliving the memories. The only things that seemed to anchor him to the 'here and now' were his horses and his grand-children, so the kids and I tried to spend at least some time with him at the barn every day or two. "I should have gone today." I admonished myself.

As I drove on, I thought about the day before. We had spent it together, but in the morning when we were supposed to be working on cleaning up his home-office, he had begun calling people from his past, seemingly at random. Reaching out, trying to re-connect. Confused, yet unable to dissuade him, I had decided to leave him to it and take a long bath in his fancy, jetted soaking tub. A real luxury. I now realized that he had been saying goodbye to the people who were the most important to him, as if he knew he didnt have much time left. As if he was opting out.

He had said to me as we pulled up in front of his gorgeous estate after lunch "I hate this huge house on top of this hill, it's so stupid to live here like this, just me and your mother and all this space. I don't want to spend another winter here." He was also concerned about ice on the driveway and abundant staircase which never saw more than two hours of sunlight a day. I cringed at the memory and drove on down the long straight stretch of highway toward the hospital for what seemed like forever.

Luckily for me, I had recently become the "poster child" for personal development. After my little brother died, I had made a series of decisions over the next near-decade, that wern't necessarily always in support of my own highest good. A long and twisted road that had led me to my current situation. In an attempt to create a massive shift in my life, I had started reading books about personal improvement and metaphysics. All of that practice of becoming a better person was paying off as I breathed deeply into my diaphragm and focused on the road one bite sized length at a time, just like the books told me to do.

While alarms were ringing in my head and a constant prayer of "Please wait for me. Please dear God let him wait for me" became my mantra. I simultaneously told myself "All you have to do is get to the next stop sign. All you have to do is take the exit. All you have to do is turn right."

When I got to the emergency room, he was still unconscious and now intubated. My mom was sitting in a chair, on her phone, dealing with a work-related matter to escape being present, as per usual. A nurse showed me in and said that she would go get the doctor now that I had arrived.

He came into the small, cutained-off area, asked me to take a seat, then sat down facing us and began speaking slowly:

"The CT shows that your husband, your father" he acknowledged us sequentially, "has had an aneurysm and there is extensive bleeding in his brain. There are times when this happens, that we would try to stop the bleeding but the problem is that at his age, (he was 83) his tissue is too friable, too delicate for surgery." He paused allowing this information to sink in.

"You are not going to try to fix this?" I said, matching his tone and tempo. "He is dying and you are not going to save him?" It came out more like a statement than a question.

"The problem is," the Dr. continued, "I don't think that we could save him even if we did perform the surgery, which is very invasive. And if for some reason it was successful and he survived, his quality of life would be greatly diminished, due to the damage already caused by the severity of the injury. I can assure you we will keep him comfortable. This is a peaceful way to die."

We held eye contact as a long pause stretched between us. My heart dropped into the bottom of my stomach. My throat constricted. My eyes narrowed.

"Is there anyone you need to call?" He asked gently "to say goodbye?"

"We are the only ones left." I stated confidently. "Who would we call?" It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question to me at the time, given that when I was in any sort of trouble the first person I always looked to was my dad. He was currently lying in a hospital bed five feet away from me, unconcious, hooked up to a magnitude of machines that were very likely keeping him alive. As I tried to digest the news that this was going to be the end of him, the doctor seemed like the next best authority figure to rely on. Of course, the doctor couldn't possibly have answered that question or known that my two siblings were already dead. I wasn't making any sense to him, so it did make sense when he responded with "Oh. You are in shock. I'll give you a minute. Have the nurse call me if you have any further questions." Before quietly exiting our emergency room enclave.

I was in shock. I looked at my mom and repeated the question "Who would we call?" She just shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as tears began to fill her eyes.

I walked over to my dad's side and held his hand. I reached into my purse and removed a small bottle of frankincense essential oil. I began massaging it into the palms of his hands. For a brief moment, as I held his hand, his grip tightened and I lost my composure. Tears streamed down my cheeks.

I looked at my mom, who was trying to distract herself with her cell phone, and asked "What do we do?" Her reply; "I don't know." Held little hope.

"What do we do?" I asked the nurse who came to check on the three of us, appearing suddenly from behind the blue privacy curtain. "I can't answer that for you." She replied compassionately. "Do you know if he has an advanced directive?" She asked.

I knew. But the words "advanced directive" were like a foreign language to me at that moment.

My logical mind was lost in the tempest of my emotions. It was night time, the attorney's office was closed. My brain finally offered up.

That meant that it was going to be up to my mom and me to make the heart wrenching decision to end his life support. Although, there was really no choice. It was a matter of time.

I don't remember if I stayed in the hospital for twenty-four or seventy-two hours. I remember the sun coming up and going down. I remember several sets of family members and close friends coming to say goodbye, my children were among them. I remember someone bringing us food. I remember feeling the lack of sleep throughout my entire body but not being able to will myself away from my dad's side. I remember holding his hand as much as I possibly could, knowing that these were the last moments that I would spend with this incredible man that I loved so deeply, that had first been my world, then had given me the world.

I played his favorite songs on my phone. I had read somewhere that sometimes, even when people were unconcious, they would respond to music and voices. At the very least, he could probably hear it. I prayed that the music would transport him back to his happiest memories.

I told him over and over "I am right here with you, I love you so much, thank you for everything."

I called his best friends and my nieces to share the unfortunate news and give them a chance to say goodbye over the phone. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I wanted so badly for him to leave this world feeling like he was surrounded by love.

Kind hearted nurses came to check on him from time to time and make sure he wasn't in pain. One of them was named Shawn, like my big brother. The irony wasn't lost on me. It felt like there were angels all around us.

When his heart stopped beating, I was holding his hand.

I had fallen asleep on the chair beside him. He gasped out his last breath loud enough to wake me up. "I love you so much daddy. Thank you for everything." I gently whispered in his ear. I felt his pulse speed way up, then come to a full stop. It caused a tremendous release of energy, almost as if his soul had been tightly coiled within him and suddenly propelled outward, somewhere. Through the ceiling? Or...I can't imagine where it would have gone, but I felt it. Or was that the feeling of the curse lifting? My bones lightening? My retribution for the barn owl finally settled.

When I was sure that he was really gone, when his skin had lost its color, I walked into the hallway to look for a nurse. None were available. It was sometime in the middle of the night or the early hours of morning. I knew someone would come eventually so I crawled back to my chair, too exhausted even to cry, relieved that he was no longer suffering, and I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I saw my father's lifeless body lying peacefully in the hospital bed but my dad was not there.

As I drove east toward home, silence stretched like a canyon between me and my mom. I cried quietly and struggled to focus on the road. I couldn't even look at her or our collective grief might swallow me whole. The sun hung low in the winter sky. After I dropped her off, I went home and poured myself a glass of whiskey, even though it was only eight in the morning. Whiskey was my dad's favorite.

I looked out to the field, searching for any sign of the owl. There was nothing. The burning drink warmed my belly and sent my mind into oblivion, which was exactly where I needed it to be in that moment.

I knew my world had yet again changed, shifted. Nothing was going to be the same but somehow, this time, I felt hopeful.

The treacherous wing beats of the owl that punctuated my nightmares had been replaced by the loving and protective embrace of my dads angel wings. I needed to believe that. I imagined him reuniting with my brothers and his sister joyously and smiled through tears. My house was freezing so I climbed into the welcoming sanctuary of my warm, cozy, messy bed and I cried myself to sleep. Out of grief, out of exhaustion, out of relief.

That morning I had seen the second barn owl, I had prayed for a new beginning, a rebirth, as owls can also signify. I can happily report, nothing in my life has been the same since that day. With my guardian angels watching over me, things have only improved.