From Sharon’s Blog:
Yesterday evening I stopped by my husband’s grave. Near his gravestone are two small trees we planted that now reach two to three feet of height. Dangling among the branches were several lovely feathers an anonymous friend of Lewis’ had attached in his honor. My tears began to flow as I recognized their kindness and how the friend must remember Lewis’ love of fine-feathered tetrapods and their vaned plumes. He would keep his feather collections in bottles or in his top drawer or at his office on a shelf.
Sometimes he would take time with adults or children in the practice to share his feather cache of the week.
The day of his burial I went to his office and found a large jar filled with a variety of feathered specimens. I brought it to the burial and invited friends and family to decorate his burial urn with feathers in his honor.
A few weeks later our office manager stopped by the gravesite and found an owl resting on his stone and later that year I found an owl feather in its shadow. Nature itself honors him.
I am thinking more this morning about my dear husband and was struck by this thought:
Lewis had an incredible lightness of being and was never a burden to love. A feather, then, is a perfect tribute to his memory.
I googled and found an apt poem by Eileen T. Waldron from which I have lifted (and repositioned a bit) these fragments: