What stage of grief is Birdsong?

My therapist says I’m going through all the stages of grieving. Honestly, I don’t know what the stages are, I just deal with things as they come. When I start to cry without warning, I go hide, when I suddenly get angry, I do the same. When I feel haunted, too. Before spring, I felt like I was drowning, so I slept. “You no longer have someone who was very close to you,” she reminded me, “It’s okay to feel like this. I know how much you cared for him.”

To someone as sensitive to birds as I am, the river going from silence to the song of a dozen Yellow-rumped warblers from one day to the other, means something. It pulls you out of the dark hole you’ve been in even if that seems implausible.

What stage of grief is birdsong?

Is birdsong the stage, which allows you to finally, not just accept, but let go completely, and only think of him with mild regret and a parade of fuck words for how shitty a person he was to you? Because when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night in that roadside motel I found myself in, I saw my naked reflection in the mirror and caught myself by surprise. The sleeping stranger in the bed was absolutely right, I am beautiful and who could be so lucky to spend even one night with me during these mating times, with males, all their bravado and their plumage.