Watching The Owls Fly


Sometimes it seems like the things a person learns to depend upon just vanish in a moment and all a person is left with is the uncertainty of change.

It was just over two years ago when I used to stand outside in my mom's backyard as the sun went down just watching the sky and waiting for the barn owls to take flight. I never got tired of watching them circle as they waited for the owl from the tree next door to join them before flying up into the foothills. Later in the night I would go out to my music room - a shed that I had turned into a place to play my keyboards - and spend a little while playing the synthesizers before going outside and spending some time wandering around by the fruit trees listening to the great horned owls calling to each other and, if I was lucky, I would hear the shriek of a barn owl as it flew overhead... sometimes I would even see the ghostly white shape as it silently made its way across the sky. I felt like I was in another world... all my troubles and worries would just slip away as I watched the skies and listened.

I used to go to my mom's house every night for a few hours to feed the dogs, run errands for my mom, and just visit for a while. Somehow I thought those carefree times would never change. Until I went up to her house one night and she was gone.
She left this world suddenly... nobody could see it coming. One day she was out and about, spending time with her friends, stopping by her favorite place to buy burritos for dinner for the two of us... the next day she was gone.

I still remember the smile on her face when I went up to her house that night.

It all seems so far away now... my mom, the time spent in my shed... and the owls...

I thought it would never end.

I still sometimes go up to her house where my brother now lives... I don't go into the shed much anymore but I still watch the skies.. hoping for a glimpse of the ghostly white shape of a barn owl.. listening for the great horned owls.. wishing I could drift back in time...

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Special thanks to Spirit of the Dove for the picture used on this page.