My Christmas miracle

I have mentioned before about my mother's love of thrushes. I think I have told the story about how, after she had died, when my sister was on the phone to the vicar arranging the funeral service, I happened to glance out of the window into her garden, the garden of the house in Liverpool 18 that my sister and I had grown up in, and saw perched on the fence the biggest thrush I had ever seen. It had a magnificent speckled breast and its golden eyes stared straight into mine, fearlessly.

"Quick," I said to my sister, "get off the phone, you've got to see this!" But she waved me away and even though my pleadings and beckonings got more and more frantic, she continued her conversation for another ten minutes at least.

But when she'd finally finished and was telling me off for interrupting her when she was in the middle of something so important, I told her that I'd seen the biggest thrush ever and drew her to the window - and, amazingly, it was still there. That big bird locked eyes with each of us in turn, a powerful, searching look, then finally raised itself and took flight and sailed slowly and majestically off over the gardens and up into the sky.

"That was no thrush," said my ornithologist sister, "that was a hawk of some sort."

"But you don't get hawks in suburban Liverpool gardens, especially ones that sit there for so long," I pointed out. Then the penny dropped and we both stared at each other and knew for sure that it had been our mother who had come to see us both, perhaps to bid us farewell.

Last night, I woke some time after three. As I lay there hoping to get back to sleep, a bird started to sing a most beautiful song. I listened for a while, glanced at my clock which told me it was 3.38 am, then got up, walked to the window and looked out at the silver birch tree outside. The silver birch was Mum's favourite tree. The bird on it was a thrush, singing its heart out. I opened the curtain, gazed out into the clear, fine night and said, "Merry Christmas, Mum."