Today was my grandfather’s sister’s funeral. It was early in the morning and the weather was fittingly cloudy, and everyone was in some way irascible.
And, well, nobody ever really knows how to behave before a funeral.
I think by now most of us are familiar with the odd way in which grief presents itself.
My family had been preparing for this funeral for days, and beforehand were aware of the eventual passing she would meet since her condition had not been getting any better.
When we arrived at the chapel, my attention landed on this bird perched near the ceiling, above everyone else in the room, atop the large window frame at the very back. The window had a view of the trees behind the chapel, and the other birds flying and resting on them.
Throughout the short mass and speeches, this bird had just been flying around the ceiling, darting between chandeliers, window frames, and door frames, pecking at the glass and seemingly trying to find its way out.
During my mother’s eulogy, everyone—as far as I could see—was in tears. But I just couldn’t take my focus away from this bird.
At some point, it began flying in circles around the ceiling, before hurling itself headfirst into the window.
The bird had killed itself, and no one except me had noticed. I know, I know, it’s a funeral, what’s your problem?
The thing is, I couldn’t stop thinking about how violent that looked. Not poetic. Not symbolic in the beautiful, cinematic way people like to force onto death afterward. It looked confused and panicked. The bird kept seeing the freedom it could have had through the glass and throwing itself toward it until its body simply failed before its instinct did.
And while everyone around me was grieving someone who had been prepared for death for days, maybe weeks, or maybe even years, I was staring at something that had no comprehension of what was happening to it at all. Something that would soon become all but an inconvenience for whoever was tasked with cleaning the chapel.
I kept thinking about how strange it is that grief can make your attention cruelly specific. Some people fixate on flowers. Some people stare at the casket handles. Some people remember the texture of someone’s hand more vividly than their face. And apparently, I watched a bird die in the middle of a eulogy.
Not because I didn’t care. If anything, perhaps because my mind could not fully process the enormity of the room all at once.
There was already so much death present there, in the prayers accompanied by swollen eyes, the obviously exhausted politeness people perform at funerals. And then suddenly there was this tiny additional casualty, frantic and alone, casting itself against invisible boundaries while everyone else remained unaware.
It felt obscene. Almost intimate.
For a moment, I think I envied the bird’s honesty. It didn’t know how to mourn properly. It didn’t know how to sit still and lower its head reverently while pretending to understand mortality. It only knew that something was wrong and that it desperately wanted out, whether that something wrong was the nature of the situation or just the fact that it was stuck in a place it was not supposed to be in.
Human beings love ceremonies because they make death appear organized. As though grief can be arranged neatly into speeches, flowers, black clothing, and catered food in styrofoam containers afterward. Meanwhile, somewhere near the ceiling and eventually on the ground, something small and terrified died with not even a shred of dignity or meaning.
And somehow that felt closer to the truth.
Perhaps we invented ceremonies to avoid admitting that none of us really know what to do with endings.