Abbey's Road: On Uvalde, empty nests and peaceful goodbyes

Several weeks ago a pair of house finches built a nest atop one of our front porch columns. As locations go, it was hard to beat: Sheltered from the elements by the porch roof, out of sight of predators (all but the two-footed sort) and — unbeknownst to them, but to our family’s delight — in perfect view of our front picture window, so we could participate as (mostly) silent observers in the process of their growing family.

We watched intently as the finches flew back and forth with pieces of straw and grass in their beaks and noticed when Mama settled in for the long haul. One day in late April, I carefully positioned my phone above the nest and snapped a photo: Six speckled eggs were nestled cozily in their round bed.

In the weeks that followed, we were careful to avoid that corner of the porch — a sacrifice because the swing was there and the days were getting warmer. But we knew (thanks to Google) it would only be a short time, so we sat in the back instead.

One Saturday afternoon in early May, Mrs. Finch seemed particularly restless, and next thing we knew, the six eggs had been replaced by pink and brown blobs of fluff whose dark eyes had not yet opened. They lay in an amorphous pile of flesh and fluff, a yellow beak distinguishable here and there, and became a little bigger and a little louder each day. Eventually, as long as the windows were open, we could tell from anywhere in the house when it was meal time for The Babies.

I stopped taking their pictures because when you’re stuck in a bedroom with five of your siblings and it also happens to serve as a bathroom and you don’t have flush toilets, at a certain point even the best Instagram filters can’t fix your aesthetic. But soon the six became three, and on Wednesday after lunch, I checked and the nest was empty.

A little later that day, Mama and Papa Finch flew up to the porch and landed on a couple of decorative lanterns hanging nearby. Mama took off and flew past the nest, turned mid-flight, landed, did the same thing again, and then they left.

I watched them, feeling crushed because it’s been that kind of week. Thinking to myself: Did they know? Did they get to say goodbye? When they fed their babies in the nest that morning, did they know it would be the last time?

And then I thought about those parents in Uvalde. They didn’t know.

They didn’t know when they sat around the breakfast table on the morning of May 24 that they would come home to an empty nest.

They didn’t know, when they waved goodbye to the school bus through the front window, that their babies were out of tomorrows.

Now they are hovering around an empty place where there used to be life, and unlike the birds who temporarily took up residence on our front porch, have no hope of one day seeing their loved ones around town.

They just have an empty nest.

So in this grief and anger and bewilderment there is talk of policy change and what should be done differently, what could have prevented this, how we can keep it from happening again. I hope a solution can be found, but I believe — sadly — that as long as there are humans in the world, there will never cease to be brokenness.

What can we do in the meantime?

We could stop sending our kids to school. But we’d also have to stop going to grocery stores and concerts and church, because brokenness manages to find its way into any place, no matter how “safe.”

My single tiny action is to never say goodbye angry. I let my kids win arguments in the morning if it means we'll have peace on the way to school. I avoid nagging if it can wait (please, God, let me have a chance to nag them after school). I roll down the window as they tumble out of the van and tell them the same thing every day: “Do your best, have fun, be a good example. I love you.”

Because — I hate thinking this way, but I do — if this is the last time I see them, I want to leave them with “I love you” and nothing else.

So I say goodbye and pray that they come home to me in the afternoon, because as nature and headlines tell us, not all parents have that luxury.

Prayers, Uvalde, that you find some comfort in this tragedy. I cannot imagine your pain.

Abbey Roy is a mom of three girls who make every day an adventure. She writes to maintain her sanity. You can probably reach her at amroy@nncogannett.com, but responses are structured around bedtimes and weekends.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Abbey's Road: On Uvalde, empty nests and peaceful goodbyes