We are still getting our heads around the news, delivered matter-of-factly yesterday afternoon, that our chickens and two of our guineas are dead. I sent a text back to Florida for an update on their status, having heard nothing for a while, and was told we had "zero chickens", and were down to four guineas.
I guess I did what everyone does when confronted with such a statement, and asked for clarification. Was I to assume they were all missing and presumed dead?
"Yes" came the reply, several hours later.
What do I feel right now? Grief, but not the weepy, maudlin sort.
I feel numb, outside my body, like I am watching events that aren't real.
I want to sleep.
I feel guilty. Maybe if we'd forgone this trip north, our chickens would still be alive. Then again, everyone makes mistakes, and who's to say we would not have had the same thing happen?
I feel foolish for feeling this way. They're chickens. They're guinea fowl.
But these chickens had names, had personalities. Blackie the hen would follow me around the farm like a dog, and was clearly Mange's favorite among the ladies.
And Mange. We watched him grow from a scraggly little thing into literally the cock of the walk. We listened to his voice change as he learned to crow in the morning. We nursed him back to health a couple times when we thought we were going to lose him.
Crazy as it sounds, those birds were our family during the oddest summer of our lifetimes. We were alone on the farm but never lonely.
They trusted us to take care of them. Trusted? Maybe not the right word. I don't know if a bird can trust. There certainly was an imprinting, like we were their parents. They'd literally run across the yard to the truck whenever we'd pull up from a trip to town.
Some parents we are. Sigh.
This has been an extended season of loss for us. A massive hurricane has made us sojourners for over two years. Today I look out on a place that's beautiful, but might as well be a foreign country to one who's spent most of the last three decades on the Gulf coast. We've changed jobs, boats, cars. Very little of the flotsam of our past lives remains. We've lost identity, and to our credit hung in there and rebuilt a new one as a couple.
Wyldswood, and those birds, were the geographical nucleus of that new identity. And now grief makes me wonder if I'll ever go back, if it will ever be the same again. Death has entered the garden or, more accurately, acutely reminded us of its presence.
This is always how the story ends, doesn't it? No one who's played out a life story all the way to the finish can miss that death and loss are always the punch line to this cosmic joke. We find ways to gloss over all that with religious folk tales of the sweet by-and-by, try to stay busy and focused on goals and just getting through the day, but the reality is right outside my window in that pile of dead leaves under the maple across the street. Our chickens won't be joining us in paradise. All is vanity. Ecclesiastes 1: 2.
How to find meaning in all this?
Be kind to the one who was tasked with taking care of our birds, who right now feels awful.
Be kind to those around me, starting with P whose grief likely matches my own. It's been a tough twenty hours or so for us.
Never lose sight of the fact that all of this is fleeting, and set priorities accordingly.
Don't take for granted the notion that anyone or anything we love will be around tomorrow, or that we'll be there ourselves for that matter.
This reads like one of those ridiculous Facebook posts that gets endlessly shared, with life advice that sounds like it was borrowed from the inside of a Hallmark Card.
Enough of this numb rambling. There's a deposition to defend, time to bill, deadlines to meet. The distraction will be welcome.
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