Day 306 - even small things can break your heart

 Today is the 5th day of the 44nd week, the 2nd day of the 11th month, the 2nd day of Essay Camp, the 306th day of 2023, and:

• All Souls Day
• Cookie Monster's Birthday
• International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists
• International Day Against Violence and Bulling at School, Including Cyber Bullying
• International DOGE Day
• National Deviled Egg Day
• National Broadcast Traffic Professionals Day
• National Cash Back Day
• National Men Make Dinner Day [no BBQ allowed - real cooking!]
• National Ohio Day
• Statehood Day - North and South Dakota
• Stout Day

Quote of the day:
"Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them."

~ George Elliot, AKA Mary Ann Evans, English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. 

Prompt of the day:  Describe something small that broke your heart

There is a  short walkway from the large underground parking area, where I used to park] to the smaller one right next to the back door.   It is a cold walk from the protected underground area, for some reason it is almost a wind tunnel effect as you cross over the walkway and the breeze is strong enough to make you catch your breath even when there isn't much wind.  The walkway is covered - there is a metal sidewalk from the parking area on the ground level that goes another back door to get into our office building.  In the rafters or pipes, above the walkway, birds nest.   

One brisk spring morning, as I lugged my paraphernalia and myself  from the car to the building, I noticed a newly hatched fledgling bird had fallen from the nest above.  It was tiny, and feebly struggling.  Above me the mama bird was fiercely scolding me.  I stopped, and looked at it, and then at the nest above, which was several feet above my head.  

All kinds of thought ran through my head about getting a ladder and trying to put the little one back in the nest - but I didn't have a ladder and I didn't know where I was going to get one.  Pick it up and take it with me?  And do what with it?  I stood there staring at the poor little thing, and finally deciding there wasn't a thing I could do, carefully walked around it.  There were tears in my eyes and an ache in my heart..  That afternoon I went out at lunchtime.  The poor little thing was still there, still struggling, and ants were crawling over it.  As I watched, one ant crawled into its eye, and I turned away in tears.   When I left for work that evening, it was still there, completely still now. and ants were still crawling over it.

The next day it was gone.  

If I had picked it up in the morning, it still would've died, but it would've died warm and dry and untroubled by bugs.  I know that it was just nature taking its course, but I feel I made the wrong choice then, and I still find myself thinking about the hapless little thing, how its life was so brief, the ugliness of its demise as I pass through that walkway, and how quickly all trace of it vanished.

May we all find more mercy at our last hour than that poor little thing was given....