I gave Simon his carrot this morning,and some grain, and although he is usually generous, he lowered his ears and refused to share his grain with Lulu and Fanny, perhaps because it was cold. Lulu and Fanny have always had grain when it is cold, but Simon inhales it, he is so surprised to get it. After he was done, I brushed him and, as is often the case, talked to him.  He loves to be talked to, leaning against me, snorting and settling in like a child hearing a bedtime story. He loves to hear stories.

I told Simon that the week had begun in sorrow and grief over Rose’s death, and had ended Friday night in triumph and affirmation, as we reached our goal – to sell 1,000 copies of “Going Home” at Battenkill Books.  And we all  – Connie, you people and I – did it two weeks early. You can’t understand this, Simon, I told him, but for a small independent bookstore in a tiny town in upstate, N.Y. to sell 1,000 hard cover books in 2011 and in the shadow of Amazon and Apple and millions of digital tablets is miraculous. You can change the world with open eyes and a big heart, I told him.

Simon opened his eyes wide and his ears went straight up like an old TV antenna. Perhaps he was seeking the relevance to him, but he is nothing if not a patient listener, as most donkeys are, if they like the story.

“You see, Simon,” I explained, “this is the way the world works. One day a sad thing happens, and you are awash in tears, and then that same thing can become something else – not a loss, but a gain, not a sorrow but a joy, not the absence of something but the presence of something, not sadness but happiness, not tragedy but triumph.” And that, I said, is the strange and curious nature of life, presenting us always with sorrows and pain, and then giving us the gifts of being able to turning darkness to tears, and night into day. It happens all the time.

You can learn so much from death, I told Simon, who, I suspect, knows something about it. “You don’t know that you are going to die,” I said, “but we humans do, and all of us are afraid of it in one way or another. It is the Mother Of Fears, so great we rarely want to talk about it, but when an animal you love gets sick and then dies, and when you have to decided to do the killing, then  you are lying down in the universal experience, in a beautiful embrace with the Mother Of All Fears. It brings you face-to-face with death, grief and love, all ingredient’s in death’s great recipe. Monday, I was crying for Rose, Friday she was selling hundreds of books without being asked and Maria and I hoisted a glass of wine to her latest accomplishment.

Simon turned to me and looked baleful, yet sympathetic. “But we humans, for all of our problems and failures, are extraordinary creatures, and we make choices that you animals cannot. We take this fear and we brew something else – affirmation, affection, empathy, generousity, sympathy, connection, and then we make something beautiful. We take this mournful energy and we create a different story. And in so doing, we push back the darkness and see the light.  Isn’t that remarkable, Simon? Doesn’t it make you wonder at a world so magical, mystical and full of wonder?”

Simon butted my side with his huge snout, pushing me back a bit, and reminding me that I was holding a donkey cookie in my pants pocket, rather than giving it to him, as I told him my Story Of The World. So I did give it to him, and the two of us stood quietly in the barn as he crunched purposefully,  pondering the Story Of The World.