This popped up on my Facebook memories yesterday. These two surprise baby goats arrived a couple months before my son’s birth. It was such a happy thing.
Their mama, Hattie, had a terrible time during her first kidding so to have this one be so smooth and light was a relief and a blessing.
Sadly both these goats died a tiny handful of years later. Both sudden. Both tragic. It’s part of tending to animals…the death part. It can be so hard.
When I wrote the poem Black Hat (below) for Swan Song of a Scarecrow it helped me process Betsy’s death (by mountain lion) and brought comfort when Daisy died a year or so later (shocking, out of the blue).
Daisy’s death was my son’s first real experience with death. At two it was difficult to wrap his mind around it. The reality of death is hard enough for grown-ups to grasp and nearly impossible for a two-year-old. He sat at the sandbox saying, “I’ll just sit here and wait for Daisy to come back.” In the best way I could I had to communicate that the death of Daisy was final. But we got to enjoy her while she was with us, didn’t we?
My son still mentions Daisy in conversation and he’s almost 5 now. Most recently he was wondering if Daisy would be in heaven.
I don’t know. Maybe.
Animal death is hard. I still daydream of my favorite goat finding his way home after he disappeared unexpectedly one bright, hot midday. Just gone. Drag marks too.
Well, anyway, writing Black Hat not only helped me process my initial grief and shock of losing Betsy, but has also preserved the sweetness that came with their life.
When I see these bright, happy photos so full of fresh life and possibility, the good gift of this May morning still shines, still holds…and is not overthrown by the outcome. Has it been touched with brokenness? Yes, absolutely. But still their delightful entrance into the world has not been overcome by the ending.
Somehow.
That’s life with my Lord.
❤
BLACK HAT
Early one morning we opened the door to baby goats fresh-born. Their only coloring like hats on their head. Such a wonderful thing for their birth this way—the mama goat had such a hard one before.
Two wee ones today, knobby knees and frolicking. Spring and summer, playing and growing. Time passes as it always does. But then I looked out the window to strange noises, clever darkness.
Too late.
The one with a black hat killed without warning.
Sometimes, it goes this way. Death stretched out in the sun.
But I’ve seen goats give birth, be born. I’ve watched them run, play, explore. They’ve been safe in my arms, on my lap. And I want you to know all these things remain beautiful even when the ending is sorrow. Or stolen in hot midday. Or killed in the morning darkness.
The gift of those fresh-born goats—the plain joy of those little hooves bounding—can never be thieved in the ending.
This broken world taps out its stories. I feel myself choking. I’m living yet gasping for air. But good things received, and us, though touched and tangled with heartache—deep pain—are never quite taken over.
Still exquisite the morning she was born. All black hat and knobby knees.
-S.V.F.
read more:
The Grace of God in Seasons of Pain
The Dead Tree & Other Reflections of Life
Limping Wings // A Poem for Staying in Your Life
❤
Sierra V. Fedorko 
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