When we were growing up, my sister Martha and I shared a room, most probably from the time I was born, but I was too young to recall those crib days. My earliest memory of our lives together was my Mom coming into the room at night to read us a bedtime story, and listen to our prayers:
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my Soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my Soul to take
God Bless…
I don’t recall Martha saying hers much past when I was four years old or so. We never talked about it. I do remember her reading all the fairy stories, and half of the children’s section of the Chevy Chase Library. She inherited my Mother’s love of books, and that adoration of the written word never left her.
But I wanted to write about her love of animals. All kinds of animals; dogs, cats, birds, squirrels, mice, turtles, baby chicks, you name it, she adored it. Many was the time Martha would raid our closets for shoe boxes, so she could rescue a baby bird or squirrel that had fallen from its nest, any creature in need of help. When she got older, she fell madly in love with horseback riding, most assuredly because of the horses themselves. Another in a long line of animals who ‘spoke to her’ in some magical way most of us cannot fathom. Mark had a mystical bond with animals, a caring they sensed down to their bones, and they loved her back unconditionally. A love she got nowhere else, certainly not in our household. It was only me, whom she treated as a wounded chick or a mother hen, to whom she bonded as a sibling. Although, her love of our Dad was evident from the beginning. Hers was the only picture he carried in his wallet. We buried him with that picture, the one of Martha sitting on the back steps of our screened-in porch, clutching her well-worn stuffed toy rabbit, one of its ears flopped down in resignation to the constant dragging about she subjected it to. That bunny looked like it had been thru the war and back. There was just something about her little tomboyish ways that touched my Dad’s heart like none other of us did. They were lifelong friends, bridge partners, joke tellers, party goers, and just plain admirers of one another.
When the book and subsequent movie ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ came out, I told Mark she was the spitting image of Scout, and the relationship between Atticus Finch and his daughter, mirrored that of her and our Dad. To this day I cannot watch that movie without crying, as it brings back memories of my sister, and the dichotomy between her rough tom-boy ways and her empathy for all living things, man or beast.
It was this love of animals I wanted to speak to in this remembrance piece, on the eve of what would have been her 71th Birthday - February 17th 2015. Martha had been ill for quite some time when I arrived home in September of 2013, from almost 7 years abroad. She had kept the seriousness of her illness from me. I had no idea she’d been in hospital weeks before, and only discovered the extent of her sickness from a subsequent visit to Suburban the last week of September. Once the possibility of a diagnosis of cancer was eminent, I did what I always have done in the case of my closest loved ones probable demise from that insidious disease, I closed it out of my consciousness. I pretended that it wasn’t happening, that she just needed healthier food, to quit smoking, to take better care of herself. I tried in vain to help her accomplish these ends, only to give up in the end, as she had long before I arrived home. There were some quite astounding, seemingly random, occurrences which happened that October/November. On hindsight, I firmly believe they were anything but coincidences. They tested my faith, shook my beliefs, and left me at a loss for words, until now.
I read a book last week which gave me the courage to write about it. I will relate stories from it, throughout the next few pages. But let us start back on the day we were sitting on my sister Carol’s terrace outside her home in Rockville, MD. It had been a favorite gathering place for members of our family for over 40 years. We held birthday B-B-Q’s, Easter egg hunts, Thanksgiving cigarette breaks, and all manner of celebrations on that brick terrace, surrounded by 50 year old chestnut and pine trees, rhododendron bushes the size of the house, and azaleas so prolific they could have been at Winterthur. On this particular afternoon, we were lounging in the wrought iron rockers and enjoying the usual brisk, Indian summer weather, when all of a sudden, a movement in the oldest, soon to be dead, Chestnut tree caught our attention. I believe it was Martha who saw him first.
An absolutely enormous grey owl, that largest we’d ever seen, the first I’d actually seen in the wild, (if you could call my sister’s neighborhood in Rockville ‘wild’), was perched on one of the dead branches, staring at us. It was hunting the nest of squirrels living in the trunk of the leafless tree. My brother-in-law rushed inside to get his high-powered binoculars, and we each took turns looking at this magnificent creature up close. It was so large you couldn’t get it all into the close up vision of the lenses! A great grey owl it was, sitting majestically on that branch for what seemed like forever, staring down at us. Martha of course was concerned about the poor baby squirrels scurrying around in frantic-mode and chattering like magpies at the Tower of London, trying vainly to get inside before they became rodent snacks-of-prey. The owl sat motionless, watching every move, and no doubt calculating its odds of capturing one. He looked regal, as though he were totally in command, which evidently he was. Seconds only elapsed when he finally swooped down from his observation post, grabbed a Darwin award-winner, and flew off behind the stand of bamboo separating my sister’s yard from the one behind. His wing span was so immense, it looked like a piper cub coming in for a landing at National, except it was totally silent. Not a sound emanated, which amazed us even further. Of course Martha swore she saw the poor squirrel in its talons, even though the rest of us missed seeing it. Apparently this owl was a fairly regular visitor to the neighborhood, probably lived down in the park a block away from Carol’s home, as they’d found a half-eaten squirrel the spring before, laying under one of the pine trees at the side of their yard. They’d thought a fox, or one of the cats from next door, had gotten it. They never suspected an owl, and certainly not one the size of their youngest grandchild!
We all were left rather dumb stuck by the entire event. It was less than three-weeks later that my sister Martha passed away from a heart attack related to her cancer treatment, on November 15, 2013.
On their way to the hospital that morning, from her home in Virginia, my daughter (and Martha’s favorite niece) Tessa, told me upon arrival that she and her husband had seen so many birds along the way it started to freak her out. It seemed like thousands, not hundreds, flew in front of them in large flocks. There were huge numbers on the lawns of the parkland that lines GW Parkway, the route they’d taken to get to the hospital. She actually believed they’d all come together because of Martha. So, although she was coming in hopes of seeing her Aunt, who was by then on a ventilator, she knew in her heart immediately upon seeing them all that her second mother, her beloved Aunt, had died.
It was not a few weeks later, in December, that my sister Carol and I were once again sitting out on her terrace. She had her cat Lucky outside on his leash, tied to one of the nearby chairs. He was lying at my sister’s feet, facing her, not half a foot away, when a small bird, a baby sparrow, flew down and landed between the paws of the cat. He immediately bit down on it, and Carol clapped her hands and yelled NO LUCKY! He let it go, and it flew up and away over the cedar fencing. It happened in less than ten seconds, and we were stunned. Couldn’t believe that a bird would fly down to a cat, and that the cat wouldn’t kill it straight away. Honestly, I think Lucky was as shaken as we were by the whole thing. I should mention here that Martha adored Lucky and used to cat sit for our sister every year when they traveled down to Florida in January. I cannot say why, but I think that all these bird sightings, were related.
One of the first times I recall Martha saving anything when I was a child, was a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest from one of the oak trees that lined the box-space outside our home in Chevy Chase. She kept it in a shoe box, fed it water with an eye dropper, and found worms and other small insects for food. I don’t recall if it lived. Many of her rescues went to the small graveyard at the side of the house where we buried many a tragic orphan, but some of them did recover, and were let go when they got big enough to fly, scurry, or run to the nearest tree.
I mentioned earlier about a book I’d recently read. It was titled ‘To Heaven and Back’ by Mary C. Neal, M.D. It is the true story of a doctor who died while kayaking in Chili, then lived to tell her experience. In the book she also talks about the death of her step-father George, to whom she was very close. About how when her mother was visiting her just before his death, a great grey owl appeared on the railing of her deck at the back of her home, despite that fact that one of her two cats was out there. How, over a number of days, they’d seen the owl through various windows of the house, and when her mother went to leave, the owl swooped down to a railing at the front of her home and intensely stared at Dr. Neal. So much so, she decided last minute, that she must travel back to North Carolina with her mother, to see her step-Father. He passed away the day after their arrival. She has never seen that owl since, but truly believes the he was sent as a messenger to guide her home.
Even before reading Dr. Neal’s book, I felt that giant grey owl was a sign. I also agreed that somehow, I don’t begin to understand the depth of it, those birds my daughter witnessed, and the one Lucky let go, were all messenger’s, letting us know my sister’s passing was mourned by more than just the immediate family who loved her so dearly. There was a greater hand involved, the hand of God. If anyone deserved such a tribute, a recognition by nature, it was my sister Martha. I continue to pray she is in heaven with her beloved dogs Pal and Tammy, and is finally at peace from a life, until now, she couldn’t seem to escape. In my heart I know this is true.
