Valley of Love

This was the first story i wrote. It was written in 1998 at a time when i was missing my children. i read this to Shervin who was eight years old at the time. He asked some questions of me and i thought little about it until one night while tucking him in to sleep. In lonliness and missing his siblings i told him that he (my children) was the most important thing to me. He said "no Daddy, God is, then me."
Somehow the story reached him. i will never forget that night.



Valley of Love
I want to tell you a story about a little boy named Shunga. He was a happy boy and loved to see the birds in the sky. They flew and flew so high in the sky. Shunga thought that one-day maybe he too could fly high in the sky like the birds he loved. Of course he knew that birds can fly and little boys can not, nevertheless he like to think of himself as a little bird. He loved birds so much that he would pretend to fly himself. He would hold a feather in each hand and run around the back yard with both of his arms out pretending to be a bird. One day Shunga was walking with his dad in a park when he saw a sight that hurt him very much. He saw a little bird, lying dead on the ground. Shunga cried and cried and told his daddy to fix the little bird and to let him live again, daddy can fix anything. Shunga’s daddy looked at little Shunga and explained to him that once something leaves this earth and goes to God that it can’t be made to come back. Shunga and his daddy buried the little bird and said a little prayer for it. This made Shunga feel a little better but he was still hurt and went to his room to be sad. No matter what he did he kept thinking about the bird. His brother came in and wanted to go outside to play with him. Shunga did not want to do this because he would see the birds. Every time he thought about the birds he would be sad again.

When Shunga would come to eat dinner he did not eat much because he was so sad. This was too much for his mommy and daddy. After Shunga went to bed his parents talked about what to do with little Shunga. The next day Shunga’s mommy was outside with his brother when she had an idea. She called to Shunga to come outside. “Shunga! I see your little bird in the sky!” This made Shunga jump up and run outside to see his little bird. When he came out he saw where his mother was pointing and saw nothing. “Where mommy, where?”
“Look at that cloud, see how it looks like a bird?”
Shunga looked up at the cloud and saw that it did look like a bird, just a little. Just then something moved in the tree in front of him. Shunga looked carefully and saw the most beautiful red bird. The reddest bird he had ever seen. It was so beautiful! He looked at it and it seemed that the bird was looking back at him. Then all of a sudden the bird flew away. It was so pretty flying into the sky. Shunga found that he was not sad anymore. He remembered what mommy and daddy said that there were many, many birds in the world and that birds live and then die and that others are born. He looked at the bird flying again and saw that it was flying higher than he could remember. It was higher than even his kite would go.

From that day on, Shunga would look at each bird and, even though he remembered the little bird that he buried, he would be a little happier because he knew that the bird and everything was from God and to not be so sad because there are other birds in the sky and that bird is in Heaven.