A song after Sarah

We lost Sarah tonight.

She passed peaceably. But still, after five years of chirps and feathers rustling, of boisterous chitchat between her and mate Sky, it was far more than just a moment.

It was sad … doubly so, just ahead of Christmas.

From left, Sky and Sarah.

I feel most for Sky.

We found Sarah and Sky at a pet shop when I became enamored of finches after watching a half dozen live in a large cage at my mother’s assisted-living center.

I marveled at the birds.  They were quite social, yet their soft chirps fit well with the emotions I was feeling at the time: a need for calm, for quiet energy, a reaffirmation of life’s joy as I faced down the challenges ahead for my mother.

We named the finches Sky and Sister Sarah after a favorite Broadway show, “Guys and Dolls.”  We bought a cage and food.  The dogs were curious, but the cage was located high enough that they never quite knew what was going on “up there.”

From the beginning Sarah seemed the weaker of the two, though smarter.  Sky was clumsy and loud … always a beat behind … but full of life.  

Early on I adopted a whistle.  I’d make the noise, and the birds would respond.  They’d jump from their nest and sing their songs. I don’t know how much of it was them responding to me or responding simply to the shrill call.

Yet tonight, much older now, Sarah was in her nest breathing heavily.  And I whistled.  She replied with a soft cheap.  And then she painfully pulled herself from the nest, landed on the feeder and attempted to grab some seed.

That’s how I left her.  Two hours later when I returned, she was stiff at the bottom of the cage, her eyes open.

I removed her, her body still warm, and buried her in the back yard near our other past critters.  The dogs watched, fascinated by the little parcel of Sarah wrapped in paper towels.

It’s Sky we worry about now.  Sky and Sarah had been together almost 2,000 days.  They’d slept side by side in their reed nest, then they’d wake together, then go about the business of the day.  Always talking.

And now they are only one.  Tonight, as I bid goodnight, Sky’s eyes darted up and down, left and right, in search of his white-feathered mate. Sky’s song was now silent … and he seemed two-thirds his size.  This rambunctious, proud, loud bird was now mute. Unsure.

Tomorrow we consider bringing Sky’s cage into our TV room, where we like to congregate. Experts say there are two choices when one finch dies … introduce a new, younger finch, though sometimes the older finch rejects the new blood.  Or communicate more with the surviving finch, so that they see you as part of their flock.

We’re going to try the latter. My chance to be a bird.

Meantime, I’m taught again that we humans rarely consider the range of emotions animals can feel.  Sure, experts sometimes like to minimize the comparison, arguing, for example, that humans can reason while animals can not. 

Yet the loss that Sky feels seems just as legitimate, just as compelling as you or I would feel in identical circumstances.  Sarah’s chirps, her body’s warmth of 2,000 days, leave a void that Sky must somehow surmount.

Tomorrow we’ll see if Sky sings.  If he doesn’t, then his spirit clearly has been broken.

I think he will. ‘Tis Christmas, after all.