Spirit of a Robin
I remember my mother telling me the story of how, when she was a child, she was very close to her father, and that he had said to her that when he had his time, he would come back as a robin. He would say to her, "I'd fly in to keep an eye on you, see how things are."
I barely knew my grandfather for the man he was in his day; he had a severe stroke when I was one year old, which left him paralyzed down the left side of his body, and he lost the ability to hold a conversation. The doctors said he would live only one year, but with the care of my grandmother he lived over a decade more. He died when I was 16.
One ordinary day, I was at home with my mum and something in the garden caught my eye; at the time I did not know what my granddad had said to my mum. I had noticed a little robin sitting on the top of an otter ornament in our garden and said to mum, "Look how cute that robin is." The robin seemed to have a little look at us and fly away happily. My mother then explained the story to me.
Recently, I explained what had happened to a friend, and one day we were standing by her window and out of the blue she said to me that she had noticed a robin had come into her garden, looked at me, and flown off. We both smiled then at each other.
That's my granddad!
