Funeral

Even the harbinger of death cannot outrun it.

I've seen this crow for four days because it died on my routine running trail. After four days of passing the bird, after four days of watching its feathers become less shiny and more frizzled, and after twenty days of still having the shovel from my Mother's Day gardening adventure in my car, I decided to give this bird a funeral.

But as simple a task as it sounds, there were many obstacles.

First, the bird died in an industrial office area with no soft dirt for a grave. I was going to dig a grave in the nearby, sparsely used flower gardens, but there were frequent security patrols of the area. So I had to put the bird in my trunk and drive it about half a mile to an area near my apartment.










Second, the bird died in a cell phone waiting area for the SJ airport. So as I as scooping up the dead bird, whose wing fell off in the process, the couple in the car behind me was very confused as to why an Asian was picking up a dead bird and putting in his trunk.











Third, when I plopped the bird into the garbage bag in my trunk, a loaf of maggots fell out of the beak and the eyes sockets and the chest cavity.

Fourth, the stench from a multi-day decaying bird filmed my car in a matter of minutes. The stench wasn't bad by itself; it smelled like really bad body odor. But it was the overall experience—the flies, the exposed flesh, the stench, the empty eye sockets—that made the smell so haunting.

But after I finished burying the bird, and after I scooped out maggots from my trunk, and after I used a whole bottle of Febreze, I realized I would do it again if I had to.

I don't know why I did it. Maybe I did it because I wanted the selfish euphoria of doing a "good deed." Maybe I did it because I was bored. Maybe I should have simply put the bird in a dumpster and been done with it.

But I think the real reason I did it is because the bird and I had a bond. I saw a piece of myself in the bird. With all the changes of life, with all the disappointments, rejections, and sadness, I don't want to be a bird kicked to the side of a busy road, feathers and beak and flesh disintegrating from neglect. I would not want to have my feathers plucked by the careless gales of passing cars. I would want to decompose in the earth; I would want to be absorbed into the soil with purpose—like life was worth honoring.

And thus I could give nothing less to the bird. I lifted it off the sterile concrete and buried it in the welcoming ground. I could have called the appropriate, faceless city agency, but the bird deserved a funeral from a friend.