Thursday, June 7, 2012

Red, and the green hummingbird!



On December 7, 2008, my beloved step daddy, Red, passed away. I was living in Georgia at that time. Once I found out the news, my brother and I flew out to Vegas where he lived to attend his funeral and to be there for our mom. As you can imagine it was a very stressful time. Losing someone you love and getting the funeral arrangements going is always very stressful on all parties involved.

In the midst of all the stress, I went outside on my mom's porch to clear my head and to try and make sense of everything (talk about challenging!) Well, about two minutes later, something caught my attention that immediately stopped my obsesive thinking. About 5 feet away from me, there was a beautiful green hummingbird hovering around, just hanging out. It seemed as if it was staring at me. A minute later, it was gone. Once it left, I thought to myself, "Why did a green hummingbird come around in the middle of winter? I thought they only came around in the summer." After that, I didn't think much about it.

A month later, my friend Audrey and I went to see the movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." About half way into the movie, there's a scene where Benjamin and Captain Mike are out at sea. In the scene, there appears a green hummingbird. When I saw that, I immediately remembered the green hummingbird I saw while hanging out on my mom's front portch in Vegas from a month earlier. My eyes welled up with tears from knowing that this was my step daddy's way of letting me know that he's with me.

For three years and four months after that, I didn't see one single green hummingbird. I just thought those two times were it. Well, ne afternoon as I was talking with someone who recently had a friend pass away, she was sharing how a butterfly kept hanging around her. It reminded her of her friend. I shared with her about my green hummingbird experience. Later on that day, while I was at work, a lady and her husband came in and sat in my section. As I greeted the table, something caught my attention that stopped me dead in my tracks. The lady had a big green hummingbird tattooed on her right arm. When I saw that, it blew me away and of course, I immediately got tears in my eyes. I knew that my step daddy was with me again!!

A few days after that, Eddie and I were at Home Depot looking for chairs for our front porch. As we were looking around, I saw some hummingbird yard ornaments that I fell in love with. I told Eddie that if I see a green one, I'm buying it. We walked away, looked around for about 30 more minutes, came back to another set of hummingbird yard ornaments, and there it was!! A green one (the one you see in the picture.)

It now sits in my front yard under Eddie's favorite tree!!


1 comment:

  1. Wow I just love your experience! Thank you for sharing it with me.

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