I was nearly done with morning chores when I discovered something was very wrong.
As I prepared the chicken’s mash I glanced down to see Claire at my feet. This was her routine; to wait less than patiently, nipping and pecking at my overalls. While endearing during these cold months I wondered how this would feel on bare summer legs. That question would go unanswered.
Claire wasn’t nipping and pecking. She was simply sitting. There was an immediate and visceral understanding of what this meant, and I intentionally pushed thoughts of a happy hen learning to be patient to the surface. It was fine. Make the mash.
I picked her up and said “Thanks for being so sweet and patient this morning!” Willing my magical thinking to become her reality. But as I held her inert body, the knowing washed out all distracting thoughts and I knew – this never ends well.
I sat her back down into the soft shavings, willing her to waddle out the coop door and start her day. Instead she turned, walked to the back corner, and laid down, face to the wall.
This wasn’t an emergency situation. There was no sense of urgent medical care to offer her. I knew there was little I could do in that moment but to take care of the rest of the animals. The cacophony of hungry squawks and squeals broke me from my thoughts and I left her momentarily to tend to the others.
I would then gather “sick bay” supplies to set up in the warm house and keep watch over her. A large box, shavings, heat lamp, electrolytes, syringe. But first I needed to walk down the lane and close the bottom gate, thwarting our pig Alfie’s attempts to visit the neighbors and petition them for a bowl of Frosted Flakes. It was on this walk, outside the physical demands and routine focus of feeding dozens of animals, that I was struck so deeply with what felt like misplaced grief or sadness.
After several months of eluding animal injuries, sickness, or death – this felt like someone shaking me, looking me square in the eye and reminding me; If you’re fortunate enough to grow old here, you will lose every single animal on this farm in the not too distant future. This realization felt both heavy with grief and sadness, but also with an immense responsibility to honor their transition.
I looked around to see two of our dogs romping joyfully with each other, another at my feet as she always is, mama sheep and her little lamb bounding down the lane trying to catch up with us, pig trotting merrily behind them. The horses were grazing amidst a thin veil of fog rising up from the grass. It was all so pastoral and beautiful. And all I could think was – I’m going to lose them all.
There was so much sorrow in that moment of joy when I heard overhead seven wild geese, honking across the clear blue sky, announcing their place in the family of things. Prompting me to remember mine.
And I cried as I whispered to the sky “Thank you Mary”.
an addendum: This was originally written in March 2022 as a means to process the overwhelming sadness I was experiencing. I never looked at it again until a recent (December) writing retreat I gifted to myself. I anticipated writing volumes of similar prose to process the grief of losing my mare far too soon. And as I sat down to do that, I serendipitously rediscovered these scribbles as a gentle reminder. Rasa experienced such meaningful connection and deep friendship every day I had her, and that it was and continues to be my honor, to both love her and to grieve her.
