Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott,
Down beside the banks of the River Ex.
Yes,
I am back in Exeter.
As you know,
Ever so often I come and look after my mum.
So my morning walk takes me down alongside the river and then up through town where I treat myself to a cup of coffee.
And I've just paused,
I'm across the way,
I can see in the dimsiness of this morning light a heron standing on the edge of the river.
Oh and you'll probably hear cyclists and runners and walkers go by as well because this is a leisure path.
So there's a heron opposite me and there are some seagulls just on the river itself,
Sitting on the river itself.
I've stopped here in particular today because for some reason my friend came into my mind and it's a friend that sadly passed away last year and I got to this point and I always,
Always think of her,
Always think of her.
So why do I think of her when I get to this point?
Well,
She had been poorly for some time and I used to make it my practice to send her a message.
I say make it a practice that sounds like I,
There was some obligation,
There was no obligation but I loved to send her voice messages.
It was a wonderful thing because she wasn't able to take phone calls but she would listen to voice messages and then when she felt well enough she would respond.
And I remember the last voice message I sent to her was from this point as I was walking her along the river.
I sent her a message and sent her my love and then a few days later she passed away.
But the reason I really think about her at this point on the river and it is a place that really is a memory of her,
The last time I reached out and connected with her was from this point,
Is that the next time I walked along the river,
Just after she had died,
I walked past this exact same spot and a white feather fell from the air and landed in my hand.
It was as if it was a message from her.
I've never had that happen before.
I've seen white feathers before and I've often used them as reminders for people that have passed away but on this occasion at the exact same spot I sent the last message to her,
A white feather came and landed in my hand at the exact same time I was thinking of her and I love that.
And today's reflection is really a reflection that there is so much we don't know.
Of course you could scientifically look at statistics and say well isn't that just down to the complete fluke and lurk but in my heart I know that it wasn't and I really do learn to trust my heart so much more than statistics and the intellect both are useful but on this occasion I deeply know that there was something else going on.
The other thing that I was reflecting on as I walked down,
Often when I'm in Exeter I think of my dad because of course my dad used to be in the house and I used to help look after him too before he died last year.
And in the year,
The last year that he lived,
He had severe dementia,
He couldn't recognise anybody.
He didn't have much capacity for words or speaking and cognition.
During that time his sister passed away so bear in mind he didn't even know he had a family or sisters or siblings or children.
He was that far gone in dementia he didn't know.
And yet for probably one or two weeks,
At least when I saw him after his sister died,
He would suddenly look up and just say,
Where's Ruth?
Which was his sister's name.
Where's Ruth?
For years before he had not even mentioned her or even recognised her when she came along to see him.
And yet here,
This man who quite literally had lost his capacity to think in the most simple of ways was asking where his sister was.
And I'm saying this because it brings me great hope.
In this world that looks like it's black and white and rational and everything has a cause and effect,
It brings me hope to know that there's much more to life that I just do not know about.
