‘Everywhere I went, I looked for solace in nature’ … Helen Harris, by the River Lea in east London. Photograph: Rebecca Black View image in fullscreen ‘Everywhere I went, I looked for solace in nature’ … Helen Harris, by the River Lea in east London. Photograph: Rebecca Black A moment that changed me Bereavement A moment that changed me: my husband died – and birds began behaving strangely towards me I was living on my own for the first time in 35 years, walking every day. Nature reminded me how much there still is to be found in emptiness
Prefer the Guardian on Google A fter my husband died, the birds started behaving strangely towards me. This was not my imagination; it really happened. On my daily walks, I was startled by how close they came to me – approaching, hopping alongside me and chirping. If there were a lot of them – and if there was no one else around – it felt as if they were accompanying me, maybe trying to convey something.
I had walked on the heath near our home with my husband for years. But his illness meant that, during his final months, he could not walk with me any more. When he died – in January 2023 – I had been walking on my own for six months and the birds, I am sure of this, had paid no attention to me.
Of course, it occurred to me that this might be a message from my husband. When you are newly bereaved, it’s easy to grasp at any sign that your loved one might somehow still be there. But, in the case of my husband, I knew this could not be. Firstly, he had told me before he died that he was certain there was no afterlife and it was totally irrational of me to think that there might be. Secondly, he would never ever have chosen to come back as a bird. He was a big man, who admired big powerful animals, and – if he was that way inclined – he might have come back as a tall, many-antlered stag, roaring at me from a misty mountainside. Or, maybe more likely, because he could be morose, he might have come back as a moose or an elk, lumbering out of a gloomy forest at dusk.
One evening, a robin followed me home. I know that robins often interact with people, perching on gardeners’ spades, making eye contact. But this robin hopped along beside me for an unusually long time, watching and apparently accompanying me. In a moment of foolishness, I stopped and said quietly to the bird: “OK, if it’s you, follow me home” and at once it flew away in a big fluttering rush.
Three months after my husband’s death, I went to France, to a small village in the foothills of the Alps. One evening, as I was climbing the outside stone staircase to my room, a young magpie appeared out of nowhere and perched on the banister beside me, making a tremendous fuss. He squawked and flapped his wings and bounced up and down, obviously beside himself. As he was less than two feet away from me, this was quite disconcerting. I still don’t know what was upsetting him but I do know that things like that never used to happen to me.
View image in fullscreen ‘Sometimes I imagine my husband laughing and rolling his eyes at me’ … Helen in the south of France, January 2024. Photograph: Rebecca Black It made me begin to pay much more attention to my natural surroundings than I had before. I discovered the uncomplicated pleasure to be found in a weirdly shaped mushroom, in the steady clicking noise made by gorse bushes when the sun shines on them. I was not skipping through the woods, tra-la-la; I was far too sad. But my need to walk every day – which…