This unusual love story takes place outside a Southwest Portland office building. Tender, sad, and yet somehow hopeful, the tale – if you allow it – serves as a parable for the mystery we call life.

The character is a Canada goose.

Most animals bring out an empathy we don’t often feel, if we’re honest, toward those who walk and live among us. With an animal we connect on the purest of levels. The right animal makes us stop and feel, a phenomenon that these days can be all too rare.

And so, a story about a goose.

First, some ornithology to give you context about this particular goose that’s taken up residence on Southwest Moody Avenue, right by the front door of a building that houses programs affiliated with OHSU Hospital clinics up the street.

Research has revealed that Canada geese like fresh water. This spot is perfect: It features an expansive path of grass out front and the Willamette River beyond.

Oh, one more thing. Canada geese are monogamous. They mate for life. The bonds, researchers have learned, form in the second year.

The birds, for the sake of this story let’s call them couples, travel together in flocks, moving from north to south, as far away as Mexico, when the weather gets cold, then reversing course when the seasons change. Along the journeys, they stop to rest, eat and hang out for a while before flying away.

That’s what happened last year when a couple landed outside the Moody office. It was a pleasant surprise for those in the building, who got used to the two birds.

“For all of us here, they were part of our routine," said Lina Haywood. "People would say hello to the geese when they came in the building and goodbye when they left.”

One day, a delivery driver in a van accidentally hit and killed one of the geese.

“He brought the dead goose into the building to call someone to come pick it up,” said Scott Harvey, who works inside.

People in the building took to calling the surviving goose “Pat” because they didn’t know if it was a male or female.

“Pat would sit by that glass door,” Harvey said. “Then he’d walk up and look inside. Pat was looking for the mate in the last place it was seen.”

Other workers remember Pat walking around the building, looking into the office windows.

When the mate of a goose dies, researchers discovered that bird will mourn. Many geese will refuse to ever again mate, flying solo, a widow or widower.

One day last year, and no one can remember exactly when, Pat wasn’t there.

A week or more passed.

Nature had called.

Pat flew away.

And that was that.

A few weeks ago, a goose appeared outside the front door. Someone started leaving a bowl outside filled with fresh water every day.

Sitting by the front door.

The people who work inside the building swear this goose is Pat. More than the markings, common to all Canada geese, it’s the personality.

Their hearts know. Just the way you know that your dog or cat truly does miss you and is thrilled when you come back home at the end of the day.

There Pat was Thursday morning, hunkered down not 10 feet from the front door.

The goose, clearly healthy, walked to the glass doors to look inside with what a human might describe as hope and longing.

The mate is gone.

Never coming back.

That’s life’s truth.

People come and go.

They die.

Those left behind mourn.

They carry on.

What remains within is love.

An emotion that surges in our hearts in the most unexpected times, catching us off guard, triggered by the scent they wore, a song, holidays, a piece of clothing, a book.

In that moment, those we loved are right there, present in our souls.

And in that way, we are all that goose outside an office building in Southwest Portland.

-- Tom Hallman Jr.

thallman@oregonian.com; 503 221-8224

@thallmanjr