Feathers From Heaven

In the beginning months of my freshman year in high school (I'm 27 now), a good friend committed suicide. Leah was always a bit depressed and had a history of mental illness, but she was a good person with a compassionate heart.

Leah was a poet and wrote rather morbid poems. One was found very shortly after her death, speaking of suicide. It tore at all of her friends, considering how close the poem was to her actual death. The line that really stuck out for my boyfriend and I was "...Place 2 white doves on my grave and tell them I died for love..."

All of her friends were encouraged to go to her church for youth group to have a chance to mourn in a safe place with others that knew and loved her; so after a little debate (I am not a particularly religious person that would rather stay out of church) my friends and I went over to the church for youth group.

Being the delinquents that we were, we sat outside and smoked cigs for a time before stepping in. While out there, we met with a group leader, whom I will call 'E'. We stepped inside, while 'E' stayed out and waited for a few stragglers left outside smoking. Soon he came in with a stunned look on his face. 'so weird...look' he held up his hand and showed us a bunch of pure white feathers. I was waiting to see if anyone else was coming, and finishing my smoke when all of a sudden, it started raining feathers. My boyfriend and I looked at each other. We were both thinking, ok, they know about the poem.

Later we found out that the church wanted us to help at her wake by picking out a few bible passages and having a few of us read them at the wake. While we were all talking about that, the priest came in with a package, "Leah's family made a donation to the church in Leah's name, and we have purchased this statue to be dedicated to her. I would like to pass it around for all of you to see."

The statue slowly made its way around the group, and when it came to my boyfriend, he turned to me and said, "Look, its her doves." The statue was of a blonde girl with wings, wearing a white gown with a pink sash, and on the tips of her fingers, were two white doves.

I stepped up to the priest and handed him a copy of Leah's poem. He read it and looked up shocked. "This was Leah's?"

I said, "Yes, she wrote it."

He looked at the statue in my hand and said, "We had no idea when we purchased the statue, we just thought it looked like her."

At her funeral, we were all given flowers to place on her casket. One by one we all filed past, placing a rose on the coffin. My boyfriend was particularly upset (Leah had always crushed on him, and he always avoided her when a dance was coming up, so he didn't have to say no to her) and wanted to stay after everyone had left. We stood to the side as her parents had their last moments with her. My boyfriend stood over the open grave and wept as I held his hand. As we walked away, the wind kicked up, and as I looked back, feathers were floating toward the grave...