People think of Death as the very end of life. Terry gets scared by that, because she fears to lose all the love and great emotions that she had with her mother and all other things she loves. Overall she cares about her mother, her grandmother, the Bird refuge and the Great Salt Lake. In the book we can see how Terry loses her fear step by step.
She explains how memories of her mother, her grandmother, the Great Salt Lake and the bird refuge as well as the belief helped her to face death. Memories explain things that happened in the past and things that will happen in the future. On the day of her grandmother`s death Terry remembers a conversation between her and her grandmother, where both recognize that they have never seen owls around Great Salt Lake, but her grandmother Mimi is still thinking that she will wake up one morning to see an owl. Terry doubts that the life of a person is completely over after the person`s death. Therefore she asks her grandmother a question. “Mimi, when you die, if there really is something beyond death will you send me a sign, so I will know you are fine?” (271). After her grandmother dies two owls appear in front of Terry.
Terry mentions throughout the book that everybody should believe in something. I assume that Terry believed the two owls to be her grandmother and her mother. Terry thinks that this was a sign from Mimi to tell her that life after death truly exists and that she and Diane are fine. During a canoe trip at the Great Salt Lake Terry remembers her trip to Mexico, where she celebrated "the day of death" in order to find out more about death. In Mexico people believe that death is not a bad thing and therefore they celebrate every year the death of their beloved ones who died away. On that way they keep their adored ones forever in their mind and they don`t fear death. During her trip Terry gets to a place, where people got in contact with their family members who died away. This confirms her increasing trust of an existing life beyond death.
Terry also believes that birds are carrying her messages to heaven, which means that she believes that there is something indescribable out there in the universe which goes far beyond death. Terry also assumes the Holy Ghost to be female, because the family with god as the father and Jesus as the son needs a mother to be completed as a whole. This shows me that she really believes of God, but she also thinks the universe only works if it is in balance and therefore there has to be a female person.
Memories of her beloved ones and the belief of existing life after death made Terry built her own view of the universe, which helped her to overcome her fear to Death.
