Ravens

Midnight Messengers

Ravens, along with the other corvids in the Corvidae family (including crows, jays, and nutcrackers) are wise, resourceful, and loud. 

Their coats are the colors of char-broiled rainbows, and like an oily puddle in a parking lot, their feathers scintillate in the sun. When the sky cracks, or the bushes rustle, these spiritual mediums unsettle from their branches and wires and fence posts and fly onward like murder being silenced with a crack of lightning. 

These birds are the beakpieces between the dead and the living, and while the dead lack breath, the living lack clarity, and despite how thin the veil between these two realms may be, we remain ignorant to the afterlife that they know so well. We would be remiss not to seek their wisdom to guide us through loss into fortitude. They carve our human form into the midnight sky- illuminating our constants and curves- predicting our demise as though it were molting in the shadows. 

Living creatures were born to die, making our mortality as much a part of life as the blood that circulates it. Death may lurk like the grim silhouette of a worst nightmare, but a raven’s rawness in expressing and accepting that fate makes them exceptional grief counselors. They welcome our morbidity, downfall, and despair as inevitable rights of life, and they are keen to converse on the most harrowing of topics because we were all meant to die. 

Beak Therapy

After my brother died, I went quickly (and excessively) back to work as a nanny because being around children gave me a reason to smile. If I wasn’t at a playground in the morning, school pick-ups in the afternoon, or reading stories at bedtime, my grief would erupt like projectile vomit. I said yes to every opportunity I was offered to babysit because pushing a stroller up a hill enabled me to push my pain down.

At the top of one of these hills was a nature museum and animal rescue site that I took the kids to often. Inside were interactive exhibits, including a petting zoo, puppet show, and simulated tide pool. On one particular visit, I was sitting on a bench next to a large birdcage feeling especially tired after not sleeping the night before. I was in charge of only one child that day. He was busy building with Legos in the engineering lab when I found myself dissociating into a bad day dream.

In my peripheral vision, I caught this big, black bird staring deep inside my soul. As I turned to confirm what I was seeing, the noises of the museum muffled into the background and there was only the Raven and Me. 

With storm-grey eyes clouded over with insight, the bird stood there like a statue, until I asked it, “Do you want to be in there?” 

Stillness broke and feathers ruffled as I watched its rage build. This scarred creature clicked its tongue and violently shook its head. Pacing the length of the chain-link, it answered me with might and main, and yet, I hadn’t felt so calm in so long. 

We spoke the same grief-stricken language, and we were both furious at the cruelty of witnessing utter tragedy only to have it replay in our dreams every night. This decrepit crow preferred to be dead, and there I was- a zombie- praying that I had been the one to die instead. So, I sat and I cried in silence while this angry bird limped back and forth, cutting the air with its beak and protesting its salvation.

For the next year, I returned to that bench any chance I got. It was therapeutic not to pretend I was happy, and the raven gifted me that. I could say anything to that blind bird and it could see the real me. To this day, eleven years later, whenever I see a raven, I think of my surly but favorable friend from San Francisco, and I take a moment to honor my brethren and the solace he brought me.