When I die, I leave the feather behind
My dad was well known for translating Italian idioms or thoughts directly into English. It used to make us laugh and sometimes shake our heads. He also had no problem speaking of his impending death. This started when I was about six. He was always very healthy, but if he got a cold or any minor ailment he would call my mother and in a croaky voice, say “Bring the kids.” We would have to sit on his bed and he would get teary eyed and say “You know your father loved you.” Initially this would make me fearful, as a teenager I used to get frustrated and later in life it was a quirk of his that made me smile. I knew he really did love us. In more recent years, he no longer needed an illness to speak of his impending death. Even though he was fairly healthy, every time I saw him or occasionally on the phone when I spoke to him, he would say “When I die, I leave the feather behind.” As I explored this concept with him, it seemed to boil down to his belief that his body would remain, but his spirit would move onto its next journey. Sometimes he said it so often we would joke and say “leave many dad, we will make a pillow.” We would joke, but we all dreaded the day that he really would leave the feather behind. This December I had the blessing of spending quite a bit of time with him. On many days, he told me that he was not long for this planet. Even though he was not sick, he was starting to get tired and of course, he added that when he died, he would leave the feather behind. The last time I hugged him and said goodbye, we both avoided the question of when I would see him again. I thought it would be for his eightieth birthday, in April this year. But I did not tell him that as I wanted to surprise him closer to the time. I had no idea that three days after landing back in Australia, I would be boarding another flight to Johannesburg to help my sister and my mother organise his funeral.
My mother fielded tribes of beloved friends and family and my sister and I ran around organising the funeral and administration. In between tears and laughter, we often mentioned that he had gone and “left the feather behind.” We planned his funeral, chose music (see link below) to walk into the church behind his coffin, wrote eulogies that all of us wanted to get up and say, including the grandchildren, who chose to speak, we hung the three oil paintings that my daughter had done of my dad as part of a school project in the church and we cried and tried to also celebrate his life and his big character and personality.
When the funeral was over, we followed the coffin out of the church and down the steps. As we walked outside, I looked down as I guided my mother down the steps and lying on the top step was one perfect white feather, with a small edge of grey. It was the most perfect feather, it looked brand new, not a feather that would have fallen out without a purpose. I bent down and picked it up.
My dad had left the feather behind.
© Tanya @ Ordinary Poetry
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