Life, Death, and Farming
It’s been a hard week on the farm. We have had unexpected losses in our cow, goat, chicken, pig and even dog families. The immense rain over the last twenty-four hours hasn’t helped.
I am pretty sad, especially about our dog Cafe Ole’. I am trying to sit with my grief and experience it. I also know that it is true that death is always present on a farm just as is birth.
I’ve never seen a farmer/rancher post pictures of dead or dying animals. Understandably we may not want to trigger trauma responses or children’s tears online. But maybe more to the point, they don’t teach you to show off your dead chickens in Farm Marketing 101.
If you do spend anytime on even a mid-size farm though, you quickly realize that death cannot be hidden, avoided, or dressed up. It is everyday real.
I think my Dallas friend Monty may have put it in “city folk” terms about twenty years ago with a comment that I have never forgotten. He said “I think I need a funeral about once a week.”
Monty is not a funeral director, probate lawyer, or forensic pathologist. He is though, one of the funniest friends I have ever had, so when he said “I think I need a funeral about once a week,” we both got a perverse chuckle out of his comment. Turns out he wasn’t really joking.
As we unpacked what he meant by “I need a funeral about once a week,” he reminded me of two profound truths.
First, being up close to death allows you to understand the sacredness of life. It is not to be taken for granted. The profound importance of this day, even this minute, that we will never get again, takes on new meaning. Hearing stories about a friend at a funeral has a way of putting priorities in place very quickly.
I taped a sticky note on my bathroom mirror (don’t judge) of a quote from Anne Lamott when we lived in Dallas. It read, “dying tomorrow what shall I do today?”
The second thing I learned from Monty’s wisdom is that if you see death enough, it becomes A PART OF the sacredness of life.
The flourishing of green trees early in the spring, the barrenness of trees beginning in the late the fall. The birth of fourteen piglets this past Monday. Twenty-five chickens lost in a flood today, four days later.
If you see life and death, death and life, often enough, it becomes part of the same cosmic cycle that gets repeated over and over and over again. The essayist and novelist Haruki Murakami put it this way, “death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
Grieve—for as long as it takes. Cry out—of course. Practice radical self care—absolutely. But, I try to remember my favorite Ram Dass quote also—“we are all just walking each other home.”
If you ever get to spend time with trees, plants, cows, goats, chickens, pigs, humans or the cutest white-nosed puppy dog named Cafe Ole’—two things.
Remember to value life right now, because we all only get so much of it. And then, it’s all part of the same journey. Death is simply when we arrive at home.
