When the Nest Is Empty

The morning of the memorial, I noticed the hummingbird nest on my porch was empty.

The two tiny birds I had been watching — fragile, determined, growing a little bolder each day — had flown. Just like that. Off to build their own nests, their own lives. I stood there for a moment in my black dress, a fuschia flower in my pony tail — one that had belonged to my mother — and I thought: this is the day in a nutshell, isn't it?

Inside the church, jasmine blooms mingled with frankincense rising from a poorvar, the smoke curling upward in slow, graceful spirals. There is something hopeful in that ancient practice — the idea that prayers travel on fragrant smoke, ascending to heaven like whispers carried by wind. The priest chanted, and the sound settled into my chest like something I had always known.

I found myself admiring the intricate ironwork above the pews, watching light filter through cloudy windows in soft, diffused beams. And on the altar, white roses spelled out Tete.

It was a room full of love. Quiet, contained, honest love.

Celebration of a life measured not in titles or accomplishments — though there were many — but in the people he touched. The ones who showed up. The ones still carrying pieces of him forward.

On the drive home, I kept thinking about that empty nest.

We spend so much energy dreading the leaving. The ending. The empty space where something living used to be. But what if the empty nest is the whole point? What if it means it worked? The baby birds grew. They flew. They are out there right now, building.

Here is what loss has taught me, and what I have had to learn the hard way more than once: grief is not the opposite of creativity. It is often the source of it. The moments that bring us to our knees — the empty chairs, the smoke rising, the roses spelling a name we can no longer say out loud — those are the moments that crack us open just enough to let something true come through. Pain has a way of burning away everything that isn't essential, leaving only what matters. And what matters almost always becomes art. A painting. A song. A conversation that changes someone. A story you finally had to tell.

Song of Hummingbird Highway was born in grief and wonder in equal measure. In the quiet hours before dawn, I wrote my way through loss, through love, through questions I didn't have answers to yet. The writing didn't fix anything. But it transformed everything.

I wear pink to every celebration of life I attend — a small, quiet declaration that joy and grief are not opposites. They live in the same breath, the same room, the same morning where a nest empties and incense rises and someone you loved is honored by the fullness of how he lived.

Let loss ask its questions. Let pain be the teacher it came to be. And then — when you are ready — let it become something beautiful.

Seize the moment. Embrace love. Let the wind move through your hair and call it grace.

Are you creating? ✦