Three Birdies

It has occurred to me that most of my stories end in some tragedy; and I’m fine with that. Most end with someone or something getting squashed, shot or killed in some terrible way. I suppose that’s fine, they’re mine anyway.

A key principle to writing is writing what you know, but what do I actually know of death?

I’ve had family members and childhood friends and people I’ve seen one day disappear the next, but for some reason, as tragic as it occurs, all death is handled in a systematic fashion. This should make you feel good, I guess. We’re covered after we die, the efforts burdensome to loved ones, but death is part of us all so we do what others would do for us in the best ways we can offer. Dying is the most selfish thing you can do, but at least we all share that selfishness.

American death (for the majority) is organized—casket shopping, funeral homes, cremation wishes, burial demands. All these things are often done early-on, premeditated for when you know you’re going to die soon.

Unexpected passings are organized a bit spontaneously, yet, must be more beautiful due to the forlonging emotions created that exist special to the circumstances of unexpectancy. More powerful, lasting emotions. People try harder to honor and cry harder when it’s an unexpected death. There wasn’t closure, so those emotions run on and on. Those gone-to-soon live forever in our heads, in wider memory slots than those we knew were going to die. It’s rather unfair. The grieving are faced with a lifelong challenge to carry good thoughts to cover up the tragedy. Unexpected death is the ultimate, inflictable action.

That’s why suicide is so popular—it’s the last word, it’s the most selfish.

Something has stuck with me for the last several weeks and it’s telling me that I should take better care of addressing death, especially in my writings.

I’ll bite, but these are my stories; these tragedies just like to happen in my stories. I kill indiscriminately, I build up and drop my characters like stones into blind waters and leave each to sink, and then the stories end. Each of these fictional deaths, whether or not I satisfy them with an ending, even the fakest of my dead people find some sort of sanctuary within my words.

It would be great to write a character who only triumphs, but I don’t have an idea for that yet.

While I can write death in, and present it to you, in whatever way I choose to force it, it is up to you, reader, when you go off the page, to come to terms with death, as I have been trying to myself.

⬦⬦⬦

The summer of 2026 was especially hot. Living with Paxton was underway. Her one bed, one bath, on the fifth floor of her building, on the back corner, can get stupid hot. Her AC system is bunk and all broken; to turn it on, you turn the plastic dial two clicks to the right, so that ‘HEAT’ is activated. The dial was installed backward. This supposedly turns on the cool air.

I radiate body heat like a furnace. The heat gets to my head. It makes me irrationally angry. It brings me negative thoughts.

Hot and bothered, the only work I could find out of college was delivering food via DoorDash. What a depressing thing; it makes you feel really small, and slaughters your self-esteem as a post-grad. I finally graduated, top of my class even, and this is what I was doing with my life. Living bill to bill, forced to putter around in my car, my black car, delivering sweating food and making next to nothing for hours a day, putting aside a quarter of my earnings for gas. It's unbearable to be in my car.

This one day it had to be at least 100 degrees out, but I knew it was much hotter than 100. Denver gets hotter than anywhere else with the cramming of cars and people and activity. I was going mad. As I was headed home from delivering food, I took Park Ave, making my way south of Coors field and past the vacant lots where the homeless congregated—I spotted a dead guy.

This wasn’t your typical dead guy. There was something about this fella.

It was an older man, receding white hair, blank white tee shirt and red-and-black athletic shorts. I think he had glasses. He was very clean. He had a minor belly. He had been carrying a bag that was probably full of groceries he had just walked to buy. The bag lay next to him, dropped perfectly and unspilled. When he died, I figured the bag made a perfect plop! sound. His face was turned to the side, toward my passing car, and when I saw him, I immediately knew he was dead.

People die in Denver streets a lot; most of the time it's drug or gang related or something sinister, always over by the Market Street clubs and the Broadway district. Though, this guy died from something else, and I will bet it was the heat. He lay diagonal in the grass landscaping that separated the sidewalk from the road. There was no blood but a stillness I’ll never forget. The same as my grandpa in his open casket. His mouth was open but his eyes were closed, like he was asleep, maybe snoring. That stillness told me otherwise.

I gently drove past his body, my awareness of Park Ave wildly prominent, my madness shifted to a sarcastic elation. I did a triple take with my head, inspected the fallen man and determined he was, indeed, dead. Shock came on slowly. By the time I made it to the next stoplight, I was speaking out loud.

“Holy shit. That’s a dead man.” My reaction, simplified to short and repeated, synonymous phrases. “What the? That’s a dead guy.” Saw and went.

Then I thought: Why didn’t I do anything? What if he wasn’t dead? Passed out. Heat stroke? Dehydrated and fainted? I could've pulled over and checked to see. The stillness and agape mouth told me instinctively to stay away. The way he was lying on his belly, legs and arms flat to the Earth, that was the tell. It was very unnatural.

So I didn’t do anything. I didn't call the paramedics. I kept driving. I wanted to pawn the responsibility off to the next person who saw him. Besides, I was content with my deliveries and wanted to go back to Paxton.

This was when I did a weird thing: in my bewilderment I naturally reverted to comedy. This sounds like a fair coping mechanism that anyone in my situation might resort to, but I was trying too hard.

I poke fun at everything, because as a pessimist, I can’t help but critique and satirize everything I see, because everything I see pisses me off or brings me down somehow. I have a problem with fucking everything, I guess. It’s the way I’m wired. I have to make fun to get by.

So, not 100 yards away, I’m quick, I turn on my phone’s camera. I log jokes this way. Using a hands-free mount I position the phone to film myself at the wheel and I attempt to tell a joke. I started with something like this…

“Just saw a dead guy. Keep it up Denver…” There were other things I might've added though I can't remember them, but this is for sure what I opened with.

The disrespect dawned on me; I immediately ended the video and deleted it from my camera roll. What is wrong with me? I thought. Not 10 seconds had passed and on the spot I used some dead person as a punch line to criticize Denver’s homicide problem. I was attempting to criticize the homeless problem too, as the homeless situation and public-death run tandem in the mile high city.

I used the end of someone’s precious life (a full life of dreams and aspirations and loved ones) for an attempt to be witty. There was no joke, only my complaining.

⬦⬦⬦

That summer, there was more death—but it wasn’t human.

Since living with Paxton, for the time I was there, I witnessed the death of three birdies, spread out, and each death I handled differently.

This was the first dead birdie:

Paxton was out of town and I was house sitting for her two cats. The cats had to eat two meals a day. The feeder and water bowls needed to be refilled too. I sat around the couch. At some point, upon passing her balcony window, I spotted a dead bird laying on its side. It was on the wood paneled flooring, flat, and I mean flat. Half of its body was flattened by time and the floor. Who knows how long it was there.

This was before I saw the dead man, and I guess, to keep this short and sweet, I carefully scooped up the bird so as not to touch it, tossed it over the fifth story's railing, and let the birdie plummet down to disappear from my reality.

⬦⬦⬦

Next was the case for the second bird, and this was not pleasant:

It occurred to me that something was killing these birds and the obvious answer was they were flying into the glass door. The little things flew full speed into the glass thinking the ferns and palm plants were more of their outside world. You cannot blame Paxton for having indoor plants.

I was watching TV and sipping coffee and Paxton was out on the balcony tidying things. I noticed she’d been out there a long time. She was doing something so I watched her. She was holding something in her hands, something very small and delicate.

What I can say about Paxton is she is the most considerate soul. She believes in energy. She cannot kill a bug and she taught me to save spiders.

She’s explained to me her logic.

“Every thing deserves a shot at life. Imagine if that was you, ‘pleeeease noooo, don’t squish meeee!’”

Years ago, when I used to clean model homes, I committed a mass genocide of moths. I’d run around these freshly built houses with a blue dustcloth and whip the things out of the air, swipe them down like fighter planes, crushing their bodies and dragging a fluffy mess of their innards wherever I downed them.

So, after some time, I learned to stop killing bugs. Like a selective trait.

Paxton was standing very still and very carefully holding a little bird who struck the sliding door. She turned to look at me through the glass door with a solemn expression. I stood up from the couch. She wasn’t crying, but ready to. On the other side of the door, I could see it all just fine.

In a wrapping of wet paper towel or some sort of fabric cloak, a little birde was taking its last breaths of life. It was every second or so convulsing and twitching in her small hands. It was dying. She was gently petting it. I couldn’t watch but I tried; I mouthed to her through the glass, “It’s dying, it’s dying” trying to get her to put it down and let it die. I couldn’t face the scene, so I went back to the couch to watch from a distance and felt the tears roll. We didn’t know what to do. She faced me through the door, looking at me, now with tears in her eyes.

After some time, she came inside and told me quietly it died. I was a baby. She went outside in that horrible heat, and began taking care of things. Using a shoebox, she rested the small bird in there with some lavender and other flower clippings. It was no more than a vessel and some presents.

Finally, I went outside, now that it had died. I held her close and she explained how she was trying to comfort the creature up until it felt like going.

I looked into the box; I can’t remember the status of the eyes but the species’ had ones no bigger than lentils. There was a tiny bit of blood surrounding its tiny beak. Ten minutes ago it was dying before my wavering eyes, doing its absolute best to hold on. Something that gave it life had to have gone somewhere. It was one of the saddest things I ever saw.

We promptly took the box, a hand-spade, and ourselves to the park. We found a tree and dug a small hole. She laid the bird down in the hole with some of the flower clippings. I covered the bird and she placed an assortment of more flowers atop the mound. We both kept quiet, even after returning to her apartment.

It was a weird day. I don’t know how to finish my thoughts about it.

⬦⬦⬦

Paxton was at her office. I was at the apartment writing some bullshit. This was maybe a week later.

A third birdie died exactly the same way, only I didn’t have to watch it die this time. Just like before, it hit the glass door and landed near the grill. I had told her after last time that the glass door and the inside plants were throwing the birds for a loop, and at the time, she acknowledged it but must've forgotten to do anything. After telling her of this third instance did she tape little, green squares to the glass in a spacious array.

It was just me this time. I was in the bathroom when I heard a familiar thud. The glass. I immediately knew what it was. To my luck, when I went to inspect, the bird had died on impact. It was gone but I had to do the right thing.

Something in me changed; a lot inside me had been changing spending my life with Paxton. I did not toss it over the balcony. I did the right thing. I scrambled for a spare box. I couldn't find one. I did find an empty aluminum can. The label was ripped off so I couldn’t joke and call the bird-in-a-can, ‘creamed corn’ or pretend it’s a ‘low sodium broth’. Headfirst, as gently as my clumsy hands let me, I dumped the bird headfirst into the can. It’s neck bent sideways and I immediately felt remorse. I located the hand-spade and took off to the park.

It was a suspicious sight. There was staring as I walked with the can outstretched and the same hand-spade. Nearby the previous bird I dug a hole. Many saw me digging as fast as possible. I don’t even know if it's legal to dig and bury stuff there. I rested the bird in a 4-inch hole and did the burial myself. I did not give the creature flowers like Paxton. All I did was put dirt on top and patted it tight. I did a Catholic thing—I did the sign of the cross and went home.

I did not cry this time. That lonely night I won some money sports betting. Perhaps it was good karma, or perhaps it was only coincidence.

⬦⬦⬦

I waited a little to tell Paxton it happened again; I knew it was going to make her sad, and it did. It was right after I told her that she taped those little squares to the sliding glass door. Since then, to my knowledge, there have been no more deaths.

Paxton told me that every creature deserves a shot at life. During a vacation, Paxton saved a kitten from a road in Fredericksburg, TX, springing across oncoming traffic, the kitten melting and dodging semis in 102 degree heat. I was there, buckled in the car ready to bear witness to the worst thing I would ever see in my whole life. The kitten barely lived, but it did, and flew to her new home at 6-weeks-old.

Paxton stumbles across dead animals on her morning walks and buries them. I tell her to stop doing this, but she does it anyway. I tell her to remember to wash her hands and she does.

One of her beliefs, an assertion of hers, shared after having the numerous birdie deaths occur on her balcony, a balcony pampered daily with fresh fruit and birdseed that invites familiar visitors, like the big-balled squirrel and this fuzzy headed bird, is that these animals know to come there to die because it is a safe space.

On that balcony, it is safe to die because they know that she will take care of them after they take their last tiny breaths. Dying there they can have a proper send-off and a burial with flowers.

Just like humans.

For Jaime and my uncle Christopher