White doves telling of death

Remembrance Sunday 1998. We were walking with old friends in our wood when I chanced to look up and through the tree canopy there was a gap of bright blue sky. "Oh! LOOK! The doves! THE DOVES!!" My walking companions - three men - somewhat filled with a good lunch that had been arranged the night before at a celebration party of old friends (Thank goodness for Sunday shopping.) and much wine consumed (by them) around our circular dining room table upon which I had earlier placed a vase with the herb rosemary added. Rosemary is for remembrance and the shoots came from a fine plant given to me by my mother. My husband was some way ahead with the ladies. The men did not respond immediately and when they did, the doves had gone. My mother was found dead four days later and it would seem possible from the Coroner's report, it was the day she died. Whenever I see white doves in flight I am saddened for the year before my mother's death, I was looking out of the north-east window of my study one afternoon to see a flock of white doves swoop over our field. I thought they were going down to feed off the remains of the cropped wheat but they flew off. An hour later, I was telephoned to be told by the daughter of our former elderly neighbour who had removed to a nursing home in Hampshire, that she had died an hour before: when the doves had been seen. The elderly neighbour and her husband had kept white doves but the sparrow hawk made quick meals of them! Over and over again, these birds have told me of someone's passing. Are they the souls of the departed? But I have also felt the death of close family or friends, only to hear shortly afterwards they had indeed flown our world too.