Goatieodeo
Goatieodeo, the goat I’ve been caring for here on Orcas, (he didn’t really have an owner) didn’t show up for his grain last week. I found him under a cedar tree in the woods he’d lived his life in on the adjoining property. The timing was ironic as I had found someone who really wanted to give him a great home among lots of other animals on her stupendous farm. She planned to come meet him that very day.
After some deliberation, taking the chance that we could even lead him, we cut the fence and walked him down to my barn. It was as if his world became technicolor - he was intrigued, amazed, energized. He seemed to know we were on his side. He even stopped to eat grass on the way, seemingly forgetting he was sick! He spent the next week in my barn, hunkered under a blanket or two, not really eating or drinking much, but comfortable.
The vet came out, checked him over. We were awaiting labs on a fecal sample, as he was showing old blood…
Meanwhile my family visited. Goatie loved little Miles. My family left on Wed, at the same time Goatie took a turn for the worse. Though he had been soaking up the love and the warmth of the last week in the barn, the brushing, blankets, warm water, food etc, it seemed that whatever momentum of illness inside him had overtaken his will to live.
I spent much of my Thanksgiving with him, brushing him, massaging him, just sitting with him in the lovely barn, thinking about so much, so much gratitude for everything, even and maybe especially being there with Goatie. The solitude and peace of the holiday was palpable. And, it felt like Goatie was beginning to die. Ellen came over too, despite having a house full of family and food, which was so very bonding and rich, as Goatie had become very dear to her as well.
That night I had two dreams about him: one, that he had jumped into my laundry hamper and was looking out. I laughed and asked him if he wanted to be washed, so gave him a bath and he came out so beautifully black and shiny…even the white of his ears turned black, and I joked with him about that. The other dream that he was frolicking along behind me on a path, having so much fun.
I woke up smiling, and thinking that maybe they were dreams of his spirit being released and maybe he had died that night.
When I got to the barn an hour later he was actively dying. I sat with him for the next 5 hours. I utilized all the tools and skills I knew from my Tibetan practice, and my hospice and death/dying friends, to try to get his spirit to let go. Friend Ellen came to sit with him too. His heart and lungs were strong-at one point we thought it was time to help him over the bridge, but alas, the two island vets were off island due to the holiday and not available to hasten his death.
Ellen, who had intuited that we should move away from touching Goatie, but was sitting near Goatie’s beautiful head, began to tell me about her beloved white donkey Eleanore, who died last April. She told me how one of the gifts Eleanore left her with that of a deeper patience.
Eleanore taught her the truth of letting all our animals have all the time they need to process any transition whether it be about learning new tasks, behavior, whatever, and that their timing happens in such different ways and timelines than ours, but when afforded that patience, and time, they step towards us in such loyal, deep ways, and come to really bond and trust us.
Just then Goatie gave a volcanic sigh, and his whole body released. The barn filled up with the gust of that energetic wind. His neck, which had been rigidly held upright, completely relaxed. His breathing changed. His body twitched.
We looked at each other with the same thought. It felt like Eleanore had come and opened the curtains for him to go. It took him another 15 minutes or so to actually die.
Last night an owl hooted where Goatie had lived most of his life.
Thank you Goatie, Ellen and Eleanore, for making this Thanksgiving so very very special! And Heather for taking care of him for so long, Annie, Dr. D, Ellen W. and all the others who cared about Goatie. And John, for sending me this fitting Galway Kinnell poem.
We never know where or how the blessings will come or what they will be!
My soul takes flight
And goes to that invisible world
And upon arriving
Finds bliss.
- from Heather
“The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
”
