Chapter Ten

The Parrot

Throughout history birds have been viewed as the winged messengers of the gods. They play various roles in the human-Divine interaction: messengers, mediators, tricksters, lovers, and empowers. In ancient lore, the parrot has numerous meanings. The one I use here suggests that the parrot is a reflection of the world as it truly is, and the person interpreting the parrot must decide whether the current situation is acceptable or if change is required. The parrot is a mirror of the world we have not fully comprehended until the parrot speaks its words, for the parrot only repeats the world accurately but does not falsely create.

I had already started dating, and with each date the memories of Hope lingered deeper in my brain. I was trying to heal the deep hurt within my essence, grasping at every method I could find. Having decided that depression and suicide was not an option, I was willing to try everything to find joy again. A friend decided I should try bereavement groups—groups of men and women who meet weekly to discuss their deceased spouses. The participants assemble with a mediator who tries to give everyone an equal amount of time to speak. The first group I tried was organized by a Jewish religious agency in New York City. About ten people were assembled, and I was one of the youngest there. The room was sterile while trying to appear accommodating and upbeat, similar to a stereotypical nursing-home room. It had cream-colored walls, linoleum flooring, and walls dotted with Home Goods-type pictures. The chairs were the standard inexpensive metal-framed industrial chairs with molded plastic backs and a plastic seat separated by the two metal bars holding the backrest at ninety degrees from the seat. They were arranged in a circle so we all could engage with each other in a social-worker format. I wonder, do they teach seating arrangements to social workers? Why can’t the seating be in “V” formation, or better yet, one straight line so everyone really has to strain to communicate and not doze off occasionally as we constantly exercise our bodies to hold a linear self-help conversation. I took an open seat and eased in as best I could in those no-more-than-twenty-minutes’ seats before you have to reposition so the circulation rushes back to the skin. Since I was new, I waited awhile before participating in the conversation. As I listened to each person’s utterance, I felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie: “My rabbi instructed me to,” “My poor Debbie,” “We are not permitted to,” “Oh, my friends,” “We can’t do that!” and so on. The gathering was both comical and sad as I watched the participants discuss their dos and don’ts and requirements as surviving spouses. They were indirectly prescribing rigid rules to grieve by. After about fifteen minutes I couldn’t take the negativity and walked out, excusing myself as this was just not right for me. Maybe I’d walked in on the wrong night and didn’t give the group a fair chance, but I didn’t care to find out. I just didn’t need to go further into depression listening to their self-flagellating diatribes.

Someone suggested I join another well-known bereavement group. I met my friend Joan there, and she was why I stayed for a month or so. I wasn’t looking forward to the group each week but to the dinners Joan and I would have afterward. At each dinner we would help each other seek a new life, and this discourse was one of the best prescriptions for my recovery. The new bereavement group was not much different from the first one, other than that I felt more comfortable with several of the attendees, but the same philosophy of fixing us broken widowers and widows was employed: Let us grieve and spiral in our miseries as others try to talk us out of it or, worse, add another layer of misery on top of our own. I left the group, or actually was asked to leave, because of my refusal to accept the unabating negativity as we castigated ourselves in our hardships without repair of the future.

Joan accompanied me as I left the group that evening of no return. I’d had it with bereavement groups, and decided there had to be a better way. Joan joined another group closer to her home and asked me to join her. Against my better judgment, I went. My judgment actually needed a kick in the butt and the parrot did that. What parrot? I was a little late to the meeting, and entered a roomful of people—an assortment of Brooklyn natives. Brooklyn is diverse, yet in a crowd you can almost pick out who comes from Brooklyn either by looks, philosophies, or once they reveal their distinctive accent. This Brooklyn group consisted of people from all walks of life, from musicians to teachers, and it included a parrot. Yes, a parrot. I don’t recall whether the room was in a community center or school, but the look was the same. The building was the old-fashioned brick building built at the turn of the century. The room had the feel of an old-time school basement, for there were no windows. It was well lit by four-foot fluorescent bulbs, but still felt dark like a basement schoolroom. Our seats were arranged again in the social-worker circle, but these chairs were the standard school desk chairs with a table attached to the seat. I am in good shape and exercise a lot, but still have a hard time getting in and out of those medieval chairs. Do they think that as adults we can still negotiate them like schoolchildren? Imagine the frustration of people with much excess weight. Which is easier, getting out of an airplane middle seat to go to the bathroom, or one of those chairs? School is torture, and those chairs must have been designed by Tomás de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Spain. One gentleman was squeezed into a school-type chair with his parrot proudly displayed on the desk. My first gaze was astonishment, and all I wanted to say was, “Polly want a cracker, Polly want a cracker,” but my better judgment prevailed. I don’t recall the type of parrot, but it was a definitely a parrot, perched on a horizontal wooden dowel suspended about six inches off the desk by a vertical rod. The man who owned the bird was in his sixties, bald, and a good fifty pounds heavier than he should have been. He had the kind of rounded face that you either find amusing or jovial. His was amusing. Whenever it was his turn to tell his widower tale, he would talk to the parrot as if it were the only other person in the room. I don’t remember the parrot uttering any words, but was mesmerized by how a person could discuss his life in intimate detail with a bird. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears, as these conversations would last several minutes.

“Well, what do you think, parrot?” (I don’t recall the parrot’s name.) “She was a good woman and we miss her, don’t we?” The chubby man directed many other suggestions and questions to the parrot rather than to the group. As this display unfolded, I imagined the parrot adding even more levity to the affair, and I wanted to hear curse words and pirate ramblings from its beak. After a while, unaware of how much time had elapsed, for time has no measurement when astonishment prevails, I rose from my chair, turned to the group, and said, “I’m out of here. I want to live and be positive and not dwell in past miseries.”

I looked one more time at the parrot, whose gaze reflected the world back to me. For the first time, I was seeing the world as it really was—not one of constant misery but one to live in, journey, and savor. I never went to another bereavement group, and decided there had to be a better way to heal the past. I therefore started dating in earnest, determined to have fun as a single man. I was to enter my midlife crisis, as they call it. I could begin mine with no harm to my spouse, for she, as I selfishly felt, had left me. Hope had abandoned me in this crazy world, and I was pissed at her for leaving me to navigate it alone. I lashed out at the world, at Hope, and myself, and began my midlife crisis adventures. As in politics and pendulums, we humans sometimes go from extreme too extreme until the energy of the pendulum peters out, or worse, is stopped coldly by another force. In many instances that force is natural and Divine. My dating life was my new mirror to be broken once the parrot decided to reveal itself to me again.