I am expecting my first child, something that has made me far more nostalgic than I expected. Going through old pictures, I came across a print of my mom, with her brother Joshua. They must have been about 10 and 12, with sun kissed faces and scabby knees. This set my mind working, and I remembered when I first heard the story of the Crow Bride. Mom told me this story, about my uncle, when I myself was 12. She was in a vulnerable and emotional state, as It would have been my uncle Joshua’s 40th

birthday. She had been on the verge of tears all day, and when she told me the story at bedtime, she had a few glasses of wine in her as well. 

I never knew my uncle Joshua, my mom’s older brother, because he died a few months before I was born. I knew who he was of course, as there were other pictures of him scattered around our house. In these, he was forever young and handsome, and seemed to look wistful, with a slight smile. Every picture was the same. He had very light blue eyes and was slight of build, almost too thin. He was nearly 28 when he died, and his life was ended early during a thunderstorm when he met a drunk driver, on his way home from work. This is all very ordinary and maybe cliché, but that’s not what was extraordinary about my uncle.

I remember that my Mom’s eyes drifted off as she started to speak.