Molly had a twin. Her name was Star because she was the star of the show from the moment she kicked her way earthside.
I had waited so long for this first set of kids from Fawn the Goat, the precious cargo our foundation doe, our Queen, our matriarch, came carrying, warm within her womb. Fawnie was the first goat we’d had in a while, since moving from our rented farm to a small homestead where we’d had to give up our first goats. She came in the throes of fundamental change to our lives, of the kind that death brings, and she was a fresh start to build our new farm on our own land. A first freshener of dairy breeding, half Anglo Nubian, half Saanen, fine and pretty as a deer, scanned with twins off an Anglo Nubian buck. We were told her due date was the end of March, so when she finally birthed a month later on the last day of April, beautiful, twin, white doelings, imagine! Our foundation herd was born!
Molly was the shy one, the quiet, evasive, mischief maker, while it was Star who stole the show, a bouncing beam of bright charm and optimism who demanded to be seen and loved and delighted in. A little ray of light, Star was everything to me that summer, her energy and joy for life my antidote to the darkness of a very difficult period of personal upheaval.
She was the beginning of something bright and new, a shining star of future promise, and so I poured my heart, hopes and commitment into my star doeling. Until, with the same crashing velocity of a shooting star with which she lived in every joyous, fleeting moment, she was gone.
We buried her under a white star magnolia in the goat playground.
I saw it said around that time that while loss is an inevitable part of farming that we learn to deal with, for every farmer there is one animal whose loss will break us. I broke the night my Star died.
It was December, 2020. The year both my stepdad, Rick, and my dear Nan died, while the world around us crumbled into chaos. A final blow of grief to end an incredibly tough year.
There is a Japanese art, I’m sure you know it, of mending broken pottery with gold. The cracks filled with gold tell the story of the piece and with every mended crack the piece becomes stronger and more beautiful. Life is full of cracks. There are the little cracks that open up your heart to glimmers of gold that you carry with you, tucked away as precious memories. And then there are the earth breaking crashes that shatter you into a thousand tiny shards and you don’t know how you will ever pick yourself back up, glue yourself back together but you do, piece by tiny piece, and the story of your heartbreak becomes the beauty and the truth that is You, melded with gold.
‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places” Ernest Hemingway
And where the earth opened up to swallow you in your grief, the tiniest and most painful pieces of your break, the splinters that just won’t fit back into the jigsaw puzzle of your mended heart are buried there, in the womb of the earth, and they cocoon and transform and sprout into a new garden of growth and possibilities, rich and wise from the compost of your loss.
Ah, perhaps I feel it all too deeply. My Star was just a goat. Loss is part of farming. But I would rather love and lose and feel it all and end up with a heart of gold than one that is closed and cold. I am here to live and love and learn, so show me oceans, tumultuous and true! Show me hearts of love and wildness, raw, brave and real! To soak it all up, to immerse fully into all of Life’s embrace and feel it all! Yes, even the love of a little white goat.
I believe there are lessons to be learned from every loss, every heartbreak. And in farming, there are many. So we learn not to get bogged down in guilt or pity, but to take what we can and move forward with the wisdom of experience. And also to accept that no matter how hard we try to do everything right and well, nature follows her own laws and some just aren’t meant to be.
I hope my star goatling taught a young vet a humbling lesson that will stand him well. But for me, Star was my lesson was to trust my gut, even when the "expert" tells me otherwise. To hold steady in the knowledge that I am the expert on my herd, I know my animals, and to have confidence in my own capacity as their keeper.
And she was also my lesson to let go because no matter how hard we try or how we blame ourselves, each of the lives that twine with ours, however briefly, must follow their own path and sometimes that destiny is much bigger than us or our imperious whims. Maybe nothing could have saved my Star. The events that led to her death slid into place with such perfect synchronicity, I wonder… Maybe sometimes they come to teach us these hard lessons that break our hearts, beautiful catalysts of learning that cleave notches of experiential wisdom on our repertoire with the brute force of an axe, when we need it most. Perhaps the ones with the greatest lessons to give are the ones that pierce our souls and burn their memory into the retina of our being, like little beams of starlight.
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These photos alone are precious. Thank you for this beautiful story from your life. x
As always thank You for touching my heart amd helping me to weep out a little of the grief