On the Angel Wings of a Phoebe
My cousin Mary Jo recently passed. I was visiting my sister Kelli in Green Bay and stayed an extra week to attend the wake and funeral. Cousins I hadn’t seen in years were there. We shared life events and reminisced about the times we spent together as kids. Mary Jo was my second cousin and the family historian. Her mother and my grandmother were sisters. Had she been among us, she would have collected our stories like coins to store in her memory; the vault we all admired. Mary Jo was animated when she spoke. She was a retired music teacher and her hands moved to the rhythm of her words like a conductor. She had her father’s inquisitive, blue eyes and her mother’s fast talk, a vestige of our Irish heritage, and a clipped laugh that punctuated her sentences like exclamation points. Her sister, Janet, and brother, Mark, have the same speech pattern, and I feel Mary Jo’s presence in their company.
At the height of covid, Mary Jo told me that she was sick. That she had cancer. The kind of cancer women do not recover from. I was confused and numbed by the world’s pain. I listened, feeling detached as she told me of the treatments she would endure and the prognosis. This is the way it is, Beth. You need to accept it, I heard in her no-nonsense tone.
But I didn’t accept it, and after our visit, I went to Old Saint Joseph Catholic Church at Saint Norbert College in De Pere, seeking peace and quiet to think. In a dark annex at the back of the church is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary where I kneeled and prayed the rosary. It was in that union with Mary that I found the grace to accept the truth. Mary Jo had been handed her fate, a tarot card of things to come soon. Too soon. This was Mary Jo’s journey, and I would love her through it.
Left: Mary Jo, Mark, and Janet
Mary Jo, Mark, and Janet grew up on the family dairy farm in Reedsville, Wisconsin. It was my favorite place to visit while growing up. Several times a year our family made the hour and a half drive, usually after church on Sunday, to spend the day. I was the first one out of the car, running toward the barn. My Aunt Rita hollering from her front porch, “Joe, don’t let her near those cows. She’s in her church clothes!”
There was no stopping me. My outfits were filthy after spending what felt like all day in the barn with my Uncle Joe where I petted calves and squirted milk into the mouths of waiting cats. He talked to his cows like they were close friends, and when I was very small, I told my mom that someday I would marry Uncle Joe. Janet was a few years older than me. She taught me how to drive the farm truck when I was eight and helped me on to the back of cows to ride around the corral. Mark teased my sisters and me. He made us laugh, and my Aunt Rita scolded him, “Mark, leave those poor girls alone.”
Mary Jo and Todd
Mary Jo was ten years older than me. She had gone off to Catholic high school in Manitowoc, a half hour drive from the farm. I only saw her at family reunions, but I admired her. She was both beautiful and brilliant. She talked about school and life in the dorms. She seemed so cosmopolitan. I was eleven when she married her husband, Todd. She looked like a princess in her wedding gown. I wanted to be her when I grew up.
We fell out of touch as life’s responsibilities demanded our full attention but had grown close over the past ten years. She was one of the first people I told that I had found my daughter after giving her up for adoption, and Mary Jo had an opportunity to meet her. We texted often and got together whenever I was in Wisconsin. She started a cousin’s Facebook message board a few years ago where there is now a treasure trove of photos and stories chronicling our family’s shared history. At night, I find myself scrolling through the posts shared by so many, feeling connected to things much bigger than myself.
These are the facts. A tribute to Mary Jo, but her passing has left an expansive void that spreads wide and affects the lives of so many. I was on centuries-old family ground when she passed. A place that is intrinsically my home, no matter how far I roam. I was allowed to grieve where the rich, black soil my ancestors farmed absorbed my pain, transporting it underground to roots seeking nourishment. I was grateful for that time with family.
I returned home to Arizona where I felt I was on shaky ground until a white flycatcher appeared in the wash behind our house. It fluttered about the backyard, perching on the fence to take in its surroundings. Suddenly, I was so delighted by the color and antics of the bird, the loss of Mary Jo found a proper place to rest inside me. Mary Jo was always impeccably dressed in bright colors and bedazzled jewelry. It was only fitting that she would send a unique bird to help me cope. Soon my husband and I were calling the bird Mary Jo. “Mary Jo is on the fence.” “Mary Jo is playing in the water.” “Mary Jo is watching you.” And the bird was watching. It seemed curious as I went about my morning routine, watering plants and picking tomatoes. I talked to the bird as though it was Mary Jo. I told her I missed her, and that I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye. This went on for days. At some point, I reached out to an Arizona birding group on Facebook where birders agreed that it was a leucistic Say’s Phoebe. Unlike albinism, leucism means that an animal, and in this case, a phoebe, is mostly white, but has some color. This bird’s tail feathers are dark grey. Only 1 in 30,000 birds has this anomaly. Mary Jo had delivered something rare and beautiful to ponder.
The bird eventually left our yard. At sunrise and sunset I scoured the wash looking for it. When it finally appeared, I was thrilled fearing the feral cats that make their homes in the bamboo and oleander along the banks of the wash had snatched it up.
“Hello,” I said. “Thank you for being here when I needed you, but it’s time to say goodbye. I’m okay.”
I sensed Mary Jo’s presence and heard her reply, This is the way it is, Beth.
That was a week ago today. I still look for the Say’s Phoebe in all its grandeur among the drab colors of the desert. But she has moved on. The spiritual or faith totem of the phoebe is that of new beginnings, renewal, and hope. I miss Mary Jo, but thanks to her gift of the extraordinary, white bird, I am able to let go, and like the phoebe, move on.
