Lullaby for Roadkill

I was backing out of my driveway on my way to the yoga center when I saw the old woman.

She was standing beside a car parked on the street.

She looked at me and raised her hand.

Not a wave.

A signal to wait.

I stopped the car.

She stepped into the road.

She was tiny and bent forward at the waist. One foot dragged slightly behind the other.

There was something lying in the middle of the street.

At first I thought it was a piece of trash.

The woman kept walking.

When she reached it, she bent down and picked it up.

It was a squirrel.

Something had struck it only moments before. Blood was still bright against the pavement. Part of its body had opened.

The woman picked it up with her bare hands.

I remember that.

Not because it was brave.

Because she never hesitated.

I sat there watching her.

The squirrel bled into her palms.

She carried it across the street. Its tail swung gently with each step.

Under a large tree, she knelt and laid it down.

Then she remained there for a while.

I don't know what she was looking at.

The tree.

The squirrel.

The silence that had suddenly appeared between them.

Finally she stood.

She turned toward me.

From across the street she raised her hand again.

A small motion.

This time it meant I could go.

I drove away.

I arrived late to the yoga center.

No one asked why.

***

For days I kept returning to that morning.

Not to the squirrel.

To the hand.

The certainty of it.

There had been no discussion inside her.

No visible calculation.

No struggle between being late and stopping.

No debate over whether the squirrel was already dead.

She simply responded.

As though the body already knew.

***

I have wondered what kind of life allows a person to move like that.

Not quickly.

Not slowly.

But without hesitation.

When we are frightened, the mind becomes loud.

It weighs efficiency against kindness.

It asks whether something is worth doing if it cannot be fixed.

The nervous system narrows.

We stop seeing.

Our lives become destinations.

Appointments.

Emails.

The next thing.

The squirrel becomes something to drive around.

***

When I first began practicing breathwork, I thought I was learning how to breathe.

Now I think I was learning something else.

Breathwork does not make life easier.

It does not remove grief.

It does not prevent loss.

But over the years, I have noticed that it changes the distance between seeing and responding.

It softens the moment between them.

Sometimes that moment disappears altogether.

***

People often imagine breathwork as a technique for relaxation.

Sometimes it is.

But beneath the calmer breathing and quieter thoughts, something more subtle begins to change.

The body starts trusting itself again.

Instead of living almost entirely inside the mind, we begin living inside our senses.

The sound of birds returns.

The weight of a teacup.

The warmth of another person's hand.

The tension behind someone's smile.

Things that were always there begin to arrive again.

***

Tea has taught me something similar.

When I prepare matcha, I listen for sounds I never noticed before.

Water entering the bowl.

The bamboo whisk touching ceramic.

The first breath before drinking.

Silence has texture.

Attention has weight.

Nothing has changed except the person who is listening.

***

I think about the old woman often.

I never learned her name.

I don't know where she was going.

Perhaps she was also late for something.

Perhaps she had done this before.

Perhaps she simply understood that tenderness is not measured by whether it changes the outcome.

The squirrel still died.

But it did not remain in the middle of the road.

***

That has become, quietly, one of the ways I understand healing.

Healing is not always rescue.

Sometimes healing is the refusal to let suffering remain unseen.

Sometimes it is carrying what cannot be saved beneath a tree.

Sometimes it is sitting beside another person's grief long enough that they no longer carry it alone.

***

That night I listened to a song called *Lullaby for Roadkill.*

Cars continued moving through the darkness.

One after another.

I imagined countless small lives crossing the asphalt while headlights rushed toward somewhere important.

And I wondered whether all of us are being invited, over and over again, into the same simple practice,

to pause,

to notice,

and to become the kind of people who raise a hand,

stop the traffic of our own lives,

and make room, however briefly,

for tenderness.