A Lesson From Geese

It's a slow process but quitting won't speed it up.


The first time I stood over my son Daniel's gravestone I wished it wasn't so small. Sadness, coupled with regret, wove a shroud around me. “Don’t worry, baby," I said in the way a mama talks to her child's grave. "I’ll make things right. I’ll tell the world about who you were as my boy.”

As the March wind rustled over the last of the dead leaves from autumn, I made my promise. I would atone for not spending more money on a lavish marker---one larger than life---as he had been to me. I was a writer; I would write a book in his memory. Not just any book, it would be the kind that sparkles against a deep starry night. It would be brilliant and bold, honest and filled with the things he loved.

I wrote poetry about his soul being in Heaven, stories about the way he lived and the things he had enjoyed---watermelon slices, trips to the beach and mountains, watching Toy Story over and over again. Some of the poems were published. Articles I labored over about losing a child after cancer treatments ended up in bereavement magazines. I wrote some novels too and made sure each one had a character who had experienced a significant loss. I compiled three cookbooks in memory of children gone too soon. More time passed; my three living children grew up and left the house.

But the book I had vowed to write was still a long way from being completed.

The cemetery provided spring mornings for sitting and writing. The aroma of mowed grass and the songs of the birds that nestled in the oak by Daniel's grave all became part of my healing. But there was life on the other side of the cemetery that called me and took my time. My husband and I had a wood-working business and there were orders to fill, sanding, and staining to do. When I made time to write, the words that I typed felt bulky and weighted. Writing a memoir was more difficult than writing a novel. I wanted to get the facts right and poured over articles by memoirists about emotional truth.

When I woke during dark mornings at two, I thought about how I could tailor the book and make it shine. But it didn't shine, it didn't even glow. My inner critic told me to give up writing a book about Daniel. One day I was so fed up with it all I decided to listen to her. I went into the garage and found some wires and jump rings and things that I'd stored in a box from previous years when I made some very sad looking earrings. I looked online on how to make necklaces with beads. And one afternoon when business was slow I made a necklace. And then I made another. I ended up making three necklaces. They were pretty and I wore them. But they were not my heart. They were just a detour to keep me occupied until I could figure out what I really needed to do to get my book into shape.

On an autumn day under a gray sky, I learned a lesson that would transform me. God used a gaggle of geese to show me the art of persistence.

When I arrived at the cemetery on that particular morning, across from the circular drive where I always park my Jeep, I saw a new sight, something I'd never seen before or since then at that location. Canadian Geese greeted me. A few walked in circles on the pavement. Others walked away from me as I approached with my camera. There was one who darted over to a grave. The overall consensus was clear to me. These creatures were confused, and as my aunt Mollie would say, discombobulated. None of them were in cahoots but all were cackling, wobbling, vocal. I took some more pictures and then decided it was time to get my pen and pad from my Jeep and sit on a towel by Daniel's grave and do what I came to do. I walked away from the noisy encounter and the screeching conversations I did not understand.

When I got to the Jeep, I opened the door and that's when I heard the most air-shattering sound. The ruckus made the entire cemetery come alive. I looked overhead because that was where the sound was the loudest. That's when I saw it. In a V-format, flying through the sky, were those discombobulated geese. I grabbed my camera and took a picture, but by then, the geese were far into the sky and just little specks dotting the gray.

When the cemetery returned to calm, I asked, "How?" How had those geese, who had been so confused just minutes before, were now flying in sync together in harmony with purpose and direction? Which one of them had given the sign that it was time to be responsible? Had one of them lifted a foot indicating that it was the moment to leave? A wink? Can geese wink? How had such a motley crew taken off in such a glorious formation?

I spread Daniel's Thomas the Tank Engine towel, and sat with legs stretched out by the tiny grave that I had struggled with all these years.

I picked up my pen. I wrote a few words.

I had begun. Again.

One more time.

My inner critic had even been transformed; she was now my cheerleader. "One day," she told me in that way that critics speak to us, "if you do not give up, it will resemble a gaggle of geese who have found their place after a morning of confusion."

To the untrained eye, the photo I took of the geese in flight doesn't look like geese. Some might mistake it for a crow, a drone, or a smudge on the print. But to me, it is one of the tangible items I view to show me not to give up. Persistence is what we have to put on every day, if we want to pursue what is ours to do.