Bird By Bird
Five months ago today, I was sitting in the airport, waiting for a flight to my hometown. My brother, Matthew, died in the worst way imaginable the day before. I sat near the gate, staring off into space. Fat tears rolled down my face. Strangers looked away. My grief wrapped around me like a dusty, untouchable blanket. The day before, I was unpacking the room that would be my new studio. We had recently moved three thousand miles from the west coast to the east coast, and this was the last room to be unpacked. As I pulled a book from a tightly packed box, my phone buzzed with the last text I would ever receive from my brother.
The next morning in the airport, sleep deprived, alone, isolated, and devastated, I looked up for a brief moment to see someone carrying Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird. I let out a small gasp. I love this book. When I feel overwhelmed, I often think of the title story about her brother, ten years old at the time, trying to complete a project about birds due the next day that he had three months to write. Dismayed and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task, Anne Lamott’s father said comfortingly, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
I think about this advice nearly every day. Getting through grief is a lot like getting through any overwhelming task—except worse than anything before or since, and forever and ever. I am no stranger to grief, but I’ve learned these last five months that it doesn’t diminish with time, but instead, my capacity to hold grief has grown. It’s not a skill set I would wish on anyone. The moment I saw Bird By Bird in the stranger’s hand at the airport, one of the gate agents called out to another and yelled, “YO, MATT!” Since that moment, birds and Matthew have been connected. I’ve made a bird every day since returning home. Sometimes, I draw my bird; sometimes, I use collage or cut-painted paper; other times, I work mindlessly, filling a page over and over with birds, their forms becoming almost human as I interlock them across the page.
I’ve made hundreds of birds since September. They sit in a neat box on a shelf in my studio. Each honors the life of my brother, Matthew. Each holds the sadness I feel about his death.
Creating birds is fulfilling a deep longing for home that was ripped away on the day he died. I know making birds isn’t serious business like fighting fascism, but it’s doing something for me, and for right now, that’s enough. My grief feels less dusty and devastating, more alive and ready to take flight. I’m making it through this, bird by bird.