This evening, a note of accomplishment and affirmation to wrap up a roller-coaster weekend. Life happens, to us it seems to happen often and with relish. The weekend began with Simon’s death and ended with our finishing what seemed to me to be a Herculean effort to scrap off the living room wallpaper, which had been up there for a very long time, spackle and patch the old wall, and then apply two coats of the orange/yellow paint.
Maria did a simply incredible job of organizing this, cleaning up, scampering up and down ladders, patching and sanding, and painting. She is a remarkably accomplished human being, she does so many things remarkably well, she really has no idea of her own strength and power.
I did a lot of spraying and scraping, but I will be honest, I just can’t do as much as she can, and not nearly as well. She is a dervish when she locks onto something. My mind will not focus on one thing for too long, nor will my body permit too much bending or reaching up and stretching. It is hard for me to admit that, but authenticity is not cheap or easy.
Maria restored houses with her ex-husband in her former marriage, and she is very good at restoration, but does not really love doing it. Our dining room was the dingiest room in the house, the wallpaper was faded and covered with dust and soot, it was a gloomy space. It is no longer gloomy, it is bright and cheerful and from now one, we will eat our meals there instead of in the living room.
All of the rooms downstairs have now been done except the wallpaper in the bathroom and the pantry and hallway. We will get to it, we do very well as a team, even if I lag behind. Maria’s artistry really comes into play, she paints carefully and professionally, and she is also putting her art on a chunk of the wall. Last night, after Simon was long buried, we looked at one another and said, “let’s go finish it,” and we simply put our backs into it, Maria’s lasting much longer than mine. I did great spraying and offered moral support and flirtation.
We love our small farmhouse for many reasons, at least one of which is that we have worked on so much of it together. it was a wonderful house from the beginning, but had turned dingy and dark as Florence Walrath had aged so graciously. She didn’t have the energy or the resources to polish it up at the end, and in another life, I would have hired people to do this work.
I am glad that we couldn’t afford to do that, it gave us such a rich sense of connection, ownership, pride and accomplishment. I think I’ll call it Simon’s wall from now on, a very fitting tribute to him on the weekend of his departure. I love my wife very much, she is one of the most remarkable people I have known, I am so proud to be her husband and lover and friend.
I got up very early this morning so that Maria could sleep late, I went out and fed the donkeys and sheep and let the chickens out of their roost. As I came into the house, my phone pinged and I got a text message from my friend Lisa Dingle, who lives in eastern Massachusetts, three or four hours away. It said simply: “I’m on my way.”
I didn’t answer, I thought it was a message mistakenly sent to me. I had no idea what she meant, especially in the darkness in the middle of an ice and rain storm that made it hard for me to even walk to the pasture gate. Several hours later, Maria and I had breakfast and went out to the pasture to check on the donkeys and visit Simon’s grave. We were settling down after an unexpectedly sad and shocking day yesterday.
As we shoveled manure out of the barn, I heard Maria yell in surprise, but she sounded happy, and I thought I heard her say “it’s Lisa Dingle!” But it still didn’t occur to me that it really was Lisa Dingle, I didn’t even want to think about that long drive in the middle of the night through ice-clogged roads and fog. She hadn’t told me she was coming, I hadn’t asked her to come, surely not in such weather.
I’ve learned a lot about the spirit of friendship this summer. The first lesson came in July when I was rushed to the hospital for open heart surgery. The second came this weekend when Simon died. Simon was not just our donkey, he belonged to the world, and the world was deeply upset by his death. It was not a private thing, but a very public thing and I felt strongly obliged to share it.
As open as I sometimes am on the blog, people who know me understand that I am a very private person and I rarely react well when people intrude on my space unannounced or invited, I have had too much trouble with that over the years. I am also an aging man who was closed up for most of his life, and the rust on those locks is still being chipped away, mostly by my wonderful wife and some determined and loving friends.
When I saw Lisa, I was irritated. Why hadn’t she called? What did she want? Why would she make such a grueling and dangerous drive through the night? Seeing her, my annoyance and resisted melted away. Lisa and I are like brother and sister, we love and trust one another. She, alone in the world, called me every single week in the lonely weeks after my heart surgery, she probably does not yet know what those calls meant to me.
What did she want? Nothing. She didn’t even know if we would be home, nor did it matter to her. She brought a bag of chocolate and some tea with her. If we were busy or out, she said, she would just leave it there. In fact, she said, she just wanted to see if we were okay and planned to leave anyway.
We were both delighted to see her, once my walls came down. We showed her Simon’s grave, dragged her inside for tea, sat down to talk to her. Maria loves Lisa, she lights up at the sight of her. I was pretty glad to see her, too, once I got over myself.
We talked for an hour or so, we talk very easily, all of us. Then I insisted she stay for lunch. I made veggie pasta with pesto and ground cheese, and I said I had to blog – this is how I have been dealing with Simon, it works for me. Lisa said sure, of course, and she said she wanted to work with Maria on the dining room wall while I was writing. I went into my study and closed the door. I heard the two of them laughing and working together and when I came out, the wall was finished. Lisa did the spraying and scraping and Maria made it quite clear to me that Lisa worked a lot faster and more efficiently than I did. Two obsessives on the wall.
And then she left, and I saw clearly what the spirit of friendship is. It is about giving what is needed, being present in trouble, understanding what is really wanted and what isn’t. Lisa did not tell us of her troubles, her losses, she simply needed to show that she was there, and cared enough about us to come and see for herself that we were okay. “This is what friendship is about,” she said, as I scolded her for driving through the nasty night.
Truthfully, I wouldn’t know, I have not had that many friends in my life.
Saturday, our friend Mandy Meyer-Hill texted that she was coming over to drop off some soup and bread, she read about Simon on the blog. She wasn’t going to come in, she said, she was thinking of us. We dragged her inside and were happy to see her. Mandy does not care about animals that much, she had never really even met Simon or paid much attention to him. That was not why she was there. That is the spirit of friendship.
There are those who are there, and there are those who are not. Sometimes, it is as simple as that. Lisa could have sent an e-mail just as easily. E- mail is free and easy. She didn’t have to drive over all those misty mountains in the dark.
After my surgery, my friend Scott Carrino would show up with lunch and salad. He would sit and talk with me. Those small things make such a big difference. Saturday Scott came over to say goodbye to Simon, he thought of Simon as a brother, he often came by to see him. Scott called first thing in the morning to see how I was doing. I was doing fine, I said, better than he was.
Saturday, our friends and neighbors. Kim and Jack Macmillan appeared on the farm, just to give us some hugs and pats on the back and see what, if anything, we needed. When we are in trouble, they are always there. They are there when we are not in trouble as well.
Lisa and Maria finished the last undone wall, Maria is giving it a second coat even as we speak. Tea and dark chocolate and an afternoon’s hard work. That is the spirit of friendship. Family has always been a painful thing both for Maria and for me. But family can come in different forms, and in different times.
Simon brought me so many gifts, and here is yet another, his loving spirit has brought me friendship and helped me understand it’s true spirit. Real friends are simply there when you need them, they don’t ask or wait to be invited. They leave their troubles and sorrows at the door, and hold your hands while you walk through yours. We will make sure to return the favor.
When Lisa left, Maria and I turned to one another and said at the same time. “that was great.” We were both so glad she came.
In the animal world, death and life are brothers and sisters, siblings, not one thing but two. I think sometimes the siblings laugh at us foolish people, we have always wanted to believe that life and death are separate and apart from one another, we are always shocked to learn that they are not two things, but one, they are the same thing, blood relations, close and bound to one another.
Shortly before Dr. John McDermott arrived from the Granville Large Animal Service, Simon struggled to his feet for me, I had been urging him to get up. Do this for me, I said, and he did. He hung on until the vet came, wobbly but upright.
As Dr. McDermott examined him, his great spirit failed and he collapsed, and stood for the last time. Dr. McDermott, our petsitter and friend Deb Foster, Ken Norman’s (our farrier) wife Eli Anita-Norman and Maria rushed to comfort him and steady him. Ken was in the hospital, crying over the video I messaged him. Simon meant a lot to us, Getting Simon was one of the first things Maria and I did together as husband and wife, and one of the best.
I had told Dr. McDermott when he arrived that it looked bad, I saw Simon have the stroke that was to nearly kill him.
Dr. McDermott said Simon’s temperature was 95, low for a donkey, near death. His heart was failing, we looked at each other – and I looked over at Maria – and the three of us all nodded together, we all knew what to do.
I have received many wonderful messages from people all over the world, and I thank you. Many of those messages talk about me, Simon and the Rainbow Bridge, the most popular animal story of all time. As a writer, I wish I had written it, Simon and I would have spent our last days together on a yacht, he would be munching on grain imported from Argentina and I would be drinking champagne.
I am happy for anyone who wishes to meet their beloved animals in heaven or at the other end of a rainbow bridge. But I have to say I am not one of them. That is not what I wish for Simon and me.
The Rainbow Bridge legend holds that when dogs die and go to heaven, they are healed and become young again, they go to the end of a rainbow bridge and wait for us, the people who loved them, to join them in heaven. We will come across the bridge to them. There we will spend all eternity with all of our pets, playing, running, loving them without end for all time.
It is common now in the animal world when a beloved companion dies to say we will meet them “at the bridge.” Lots of people wrote it to me, but you will not hear me say it.
I don’t wish to denigrate anybody’s else, dream, we all have the right to our own, but I have always considered stories like the rainbow bridge to be a bit selfish, all about our needs, what we want, not the needs of the animals in our care, what they want.
My wish for Rose, Orson, Izzy (and Red when he dies) and Simon is not for them to spend years waiting for me in heaven on the other side of a bridge. I don’t wish to spend all eternity with a donkey and a bunch of restored, souped up border collies and hungry Labs, I can’t imagine anything that would drive me nuts more quickly. And what a prison for them.
I hope they will find other people and guide them to better places, as they did me. I don’t want to run around with them and toss balls around for all eternity, and I hope Simon and Rose and Izzy and Orson find better and more meaningful things to do. If I make it to heaven, I want to write some new chapters, not just relive the old ones.
In the animal world, I believe loving is often about letting go. That is what being a farmer is about, for sure. Or being a real animal in the real world. Simon did not exist solely for the purpose of serving me, there are times to cling tight and times to let go.
I hope I get to heaven and I hope Simon gets there too, he deserves to go. He suffered and prevailed, he had the last and best word. I said goodbye to Simon Saturday, he is gone now, off to something new, hopefully something even better. There are lots of good people with carrots out there, I think he might like a warmer climate, to be honest.
Death is the elephant in all of our rooms, especially those of us who love animals. If you live a life with animals, you will get to know death, he is a visitor to the animal world. They do not live as long as we do, and many different things can kill them. When the vet came to look at Simon, he conceded that there was no way to know for certain what was going on in his head, there is no MRI or diagnostic technology in a pasture. In the real world of real animals, we all have to follow our guts and our hearts.
For me, death is not the end, but a beginning. Death always takes something away, and opens the door to something new. A friend came to comfort me today, and she chided me a bit, she said she wanted to visit Sunday because she knew I would have one sad day, and then be moving on, thinking of the next thing, another thing, another beginning.
I’m not sure she meant it as a compliment, but I took it as one, it is my faith, my ideology, what I believe. There is nothing in the life or death of Simon, a humble donkey, for me to feel badly about, or really, to mourn. For me, it was all joy and love and connection. I shed my tears in the pasture Saturday,a lot of them. He belongs to you all, to the sky and the wind now.
And that is the real story of Simon, I saw it so clearly yesterday, I felt it when his loving spirit brushed against my cheek, gave me a soft kiss, and took wing, and was free of me and my human foibles. An end, for sure, but for me, a beginning, my eyes are wide to see what the siblings have in store for me now.
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Ken Norman, the farrier who helped save Simon’s life, has received more than $30,000 in his gofundme project to help him, his family and his horses and donkeys get through the next three months as he recovers from two knee replacement surgeries as the same time. He is going home from the hospital on Monday and faces a long and challenging recovery. Thanks for your generous and continuing contributions, he will use every penny he gets well and wisely.
We are nearly three quarters finished with our dining room wall restoration project. Scoring and scraping, scoring and scraping, spackling and painting. A great task for obsessives, I do not have the greatest attention span, as Maria keeps pointing out, I keep wandering off to take a photo, go for a walk, write on the blog, listen to music or read. I can’t really focus on anything for more than a few minutes, Maria works like a beaver, continuously and ferociously. I married well.
Tonight, we hope to scrape the last wall, the room is taking shape beautifully. My arms are sore from scraping, but happy sore.
Like the poet says, the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves, and all your piety and wit cannot change a word of it. Simon is gone, and once again the animals in my life teach me how to adapt, accept and move on. Simon did not care for dogs, he tried to stomp Red repeatedly and once did stomp on poor Lenore.
Red can handle himself, but Lenore is not that savvy, so she was kept out of the pasture. Today, I brought her into the pasture and she sat quietly while Lulu and Fanny came over to check her out. I am certain Lulu and Fanny were aware of Simon’s seizure and death – they watched his burial closely.
Red did not seem to notice or care at all, even though he was right there with us. This morning, a new routine. Lulu and Fanny both seemed calm and more affectionate, Lenore loved being in the pasture, Red kept his eye on the sheep.
Life does go on, death and life are both parts of the same experience, our common experience, one of the very few things that unites all human beings and demonstrates the power and glory of life. Today, a new routine, a new scenario. Life is powerful, it flows like the strongest stream. I can either look back or look ahead.
Simon came when he was needed, left when he was ready. I went about my business too, we resumed work on our dining room, did our chores, worked with the sheep, and here I am blogging. Tomorrow I will write about the carriage horses, Maria will be back in her studio.
We all grieve in our own individual ways, no one can tell anyone else how to do it, or should. I loved Simon deeply, I feel is absence acutely, I am moving on. His life was a joy, he had as good a life as most donkeys could ever imagined, a life of love, attention, comfort and treats. The moving finger writes, and so do I. Life on the farm is moving forward.
