Zelda continues to surprise me. She is finally getting comfortable enough for Maria and I to get close to here, even touch her or scratch her back once in awhile. She never takes her eyes off of Red, and she keeps a vigilant watch over the other ewes, who seem to depend on her, I’ve seen ewes act as leaders before, but not in this way or to this degree. She has calmed down, she doesn’t run me over and knock me down any more, she doesn’t butt Red or challenge him directly, but she sure doesn’t submit to him either, as the other ewes do. They seem to have a healthy respect for one another.
Zelda is an intelligent ewe, and she sometimes ventures off by herself, as I found this morning when I came out to feed the barn cats. She has an attitude, and we are glad we took her in. Animals never cease to surprise me and teach me.
I saw this photograph taken last Spring, just after Izzy died. We were saying goodbye to him, he is buried in the garden at Bedlam Farm where he loved to lie and look out over the valley. Izzy did a lot of good in his short time in this world. A spirit dog, he helped many people leave the world with some love and grace and he helped me reconnect to human beings when I had nearly cut the cord. Lenore and Frieda showed no signs of missing Izzy, but they did often come and sit by the garden after he died, perhaps wondering where he was.
Earlier this week, a friend called me and asked me to stop by at the impromptu memorial service she was holding for her dog Leo, a 12 year old Lab/Retriever mix. I knew the dog well and decided to go. She loved this dog dearly and he had accompanied her on so many passages of life. It was a beautiful thing, so appropriate, never maudlin or tied to drama. My friend shares my view of animal loss and grieving. She said at the service for Leo – she brought a cushion he had chewed up when he was a puppy – that he was the father of a million smiles.
She was laughing and smiling and crying at her memories of Leo. Another dog is on the way, adopted from a shelter in Canton, Ohio. She was so grateful for Leo, she said, so eager for the next dog. She was not looking to meet Leo at the other side, she hoped he was free to fly to his next life. She asked me to say a few words, something I might ordinarily decline but I so loved her spirit and the feel of this service that I got up and did say a few words, as I know she feels the way I do about grieving. “Having dogs for me,” I said, “is nothing but a river of joy, it just keeps flowing. It is a joy to get each one, and what a gift that we can repeat this experience again and again, there are so many wonderful dogs out there awaiting us in shelters and breeder’s kennels.
“Leo brightened all of the lives of the people around him, left a wake of smiles, love and memory. Our last gift to him is a promise to love the next dog just as much and just as well. Leo came and left in love. We will not turn our sorrow into lament, our loss to misery. We celebrate the gift of his life. Our wish for Leo is that he return again and again to brighten the lives of needy and confused human beings, his legacy is love unconditional, from his first breath to his last. Our wish for ourselves is that we swim in this river of joy and welcome his successor into our lives.” We looked at some photos of Leo, laughed and traded stories, cried a bit too. He was buried in her garden, as Izzy was in mine.
I loved the way my friend grieves, perhaps because it is the way I grieve. The river of joy is not a river of tears, although tears will come for Leo, they are cleansing too. We both remembered the little girl who told me once that she loved her dead chicken so much, she could not wait to love another animal again. For me, this is the legacy of love and loss when my animals die.
I think the search for connection is the most powerful instinct I have witnessed in human beings. Even our twisted and angry notions of politics speak in their own way to the desire for people to find something to connected to. I witness this almost every day on the farm. In the morning, Maria and I go out to do the chores. I usually am hauling my camera around and sending Red on his outruns (you can see him at the top of this photo). This morning, as I closed the gate, I saw that all of the animals in the pasture, the donkeys and the sheep had clustered around Maria, and Simon was nosing the sheep out of the way so he could get closer.
Maria is the most loving human being I have known, as well as one of the most creative. She talks to the animals in the most direct way, and they to her. I am lucky to be able to capture this every now and then, standing back from it. After the photo was taken, Simon came over to me, and we had our own conversation. Connection is important.
Red got quite upset when Maria played my podcast on her computer, (I was not home). He whined, raced back and forth, looked around for me. Then he settled down. Red will be sitting by my feet when I do my next podcast, which will be recorded out in the barn with Simon, I think, a spoken tour of the farm. My podcast is now up on Itunes. You can subscribe if you wish, I think Fromm Family Foods may sponsor the podcasts. I plan in doing a live Q & A with a reader or blogger each week, maybe end by answering a question. I’m excited about it, a new form of story-telling, always a miraculous thing. Some people say my voice is like Howard Stern’s, but I’m going for Edward R. Murrow, myself.
I was working in my office early working on the book about Simon and I looked around and out the back door window and I saw Simon standing by the gate waiting for me, as he does every morning. He hears me moving around in the house and waits for me to come say good morning. When I come out, he gives me an ear-shattering bray, it can be heard for miles around the farmhouse and sometimes, in the cold mornings, you can see the mist from the bray. “Good morning, Simon,” I say and then I go and get him a carrot or horse cookie. And he munches and crunches it and I talk to him a bit, and then I come back into the house to work. I can’t really imagine writing without saying good morning to Simon.
