FINN

When my grandmother was dying I used to hold up her body to the window so she could peer into garden outside. It was here that she trained her eyes on the foliage hoping to sight a flash of the elusive Natal Robin. There was huge excitement at each sighting. She was bed-ridden in those final years, this window was her frame on the world. A mis-en-scene that featured a variety of birds, butterflies and the occasional pack of Vervet monkey’s tight-roping the neighbour’s wall. Lovely as they were they were regulars, entertaining and welcome distractions but not quite understanding (as their counterpart the Robin did) that one is made more desirable when fostering an air of mystery about themselves. The robin with its burning breast, witnessed as a fleeting smudge on green, now that was the ticket, that was the one you waited (mostly to be stood up for). When it arrived in her final days, I held her body up so she could see it and she wept with relief that it had taken the trouble to pay her a final visit. Since her passing I have associated the Natal Robin with her omen, her angel. I am not the sappy metaphysical sort but grief causes one to attach especial significance to creatures or things that ordinarily might not invite a second thought. I have not seen the Robin in the garden since her passing, perhaps once but in retrospect it may well have been a thrush (the robins more deceptive understudy) similar in proportion only with a less officious breast and far more mellow (read less impressive) in hue. Yesterday when grappling with my canine companion Finn, his ear out-turned like a pink hibiscus flower , his body riddled in tumours, that ginger-beer fizz diminished from his princely eyes I glanced up to see the robin just a few metres off. As fast as it appeared it vanished taking with it the weight of terrible uncertainty that has hovered over us for some months. Just the night before was a dream of my grandmother, who although close to my heart, like the robin has been somewhat absent over the last few years from my dreaming thicket. This time it was Guy Buttery and not John Lennon (as stated in her obituary all those years back) who was sitting on the edge of her bed like some benevolent spirit-guide and strumming a plaintive song on his guitar. To my Finn, the noblest beast that ever was and will be, the driver of sheep off Transkei cliffs, an intrepid prince who padded alongside us through a thousand golden afternoons, his less glamorous but nevertheless faithful accomplice Sophie””like a rhino squeezed into a pair of high heels””trotting just a few paw prints behind. So tremendous this loss, so lost now your shadow.