Midnight at the Blackbird Café

by Heather Webber

Pain changed people. I couldn’t go back to the way I’d been, because I wasn’t the same person who’d left.

While on earth, it’s the job of us guardians to tend to the trees, nurture them, and gather their love to bake into pies to serve those who mourn, those left behind. You see, the bonds of love are only strengthened when someone leaves this earth, not diminished. Some have trouble understanding that, so it’s the pie that determines who’s in need of a message, a reminding, if you will; it’s the love in the pie that connects the two worlds; and it’s a tree keeper who delivers the message.

For where your roots are, your heart is.

she had to come back or her soul would never be at peace.”

No matter how far a guardian roams, she will always return, and while away she will never be settled, as her soul is tethered to the roots of the trees. She’ll never be truly content until she’s home among the roots, comforting and healing once again.

“We survive on sweet tea and complaining, plain and simple. Mostly the sweet tea, if I’m tellin’ it to you straight.”

Grief was a capricious companion. Sometimes distant and aloof. Sometimes so overwhelming it was hard to think a straight thought. Its mood changed at whim, making it emotionally exhausting to keep up.

It’s the love shared between the two worlds that allows the passageway to remain open, Anna Kate, darlin’. Without the love, the trees will wither and die.

The secret ingredient is love, darlin’. The purest kind of love there is.

“Grief can change a person to the point where they become someone they don’t know, or even like very much.

“But sweetie, letting go is the only way you can fly.”

You’re angry because you loved him and he left you. Healing will only come when you forgive him for leaving you.

Seems to me there’s a whole lot of people around here carrying around a heap of pain tied to the past. Might be time to start letting that go and start healing.

Once upon a time, there was a family of Celtic women with healing hands and giving hearts, who knew the value of the earth and used its abundance to heal, to soothe, to comfort.

“That a person you love is never truly gone—they’re always there, whether it’s in a memory … or a dream.” Or in a heart. All of you will always be in my heart, and part of me will always be in yours. That’s a damn good legacy, if you ask me.

“It was a choice. I could either keep dwelling on what had happened, letting it define me, or take the valuable—and sometimes painful—lessons I’d learned from the relationship and move on.

living a life in fear was no way to live at all. It was a choice.