The Saint and the Birds

Yesterday, as we were getting ready to go to Bill's last drip of Cisplatin (the difficult drug), we heard someone at the door.

Bill went out, and there stood a beautiful woman with a luminous smile.

She had a bag in her hands, and she said, "I read your blog, and I have a gift."

She gave the gift to Bill, along with her love and promise of prayers, and she left.

When we looked inside the paper bag, we found a large container of the very best bird seed. And when we got to the chemo center, Bill went outside the big window and filled all the bird seed containers with the seed and sprinkled the rest on the ground.

When we went inside for his chemo, the nurses were thrilled that he had sprinkled the seed outside. They said it means so much to the patients and to the nurses, too. They thanked him repeatedly, and he and I both thought of the woman who had given us the bird seed.

Then, in what, to the uninitiated, would seem like a coincidence, we once again were told that the chair for Bill would be the window chair.

And as Bill sat there for the rest of the day, sometimes hurting, sometimes worrying, sometimes exhausted, the birds came.

This time, it wasn't only sparrows, but there was a tiny little gold-green finch, and a tiny brown bird with a long beak, and a black-capped chickadee, and an itty bitty blue-gray bird, then a very small crested brown bird.

And then came the best surprise. Cardinals and doves! The cardinals, male and female, ate from the feeders, and the doves were grateful for the seeds on the ground. All afternoon, so many birds came and ate the seeds.

Some of the people who were blessed by this--among the patients receiving cancer chemo yesterday--included: a very tiny woman who loves apple juice and who was telling the nurses how much she loves her pup at home; her big, tall husband who sat beside her faithfully throughout her treatment; a young man who had never gotten chemo before and was afraid; a woman who had no hair and felt completely exhausted that day; a man who looked very white, and was so sick that he couldn't even sit in a chair for his treatment, but had to lie in a special bed; and all the sweet nurses. And that list was just on our side of the room; the other whole side got the same blessings, only we couldn't see who those people were.

Do you sometimes think that these days there aren't saints in the world, who have a special gift for bringing little candles--and seeds--into the darkest places?

Think again.