It never ends
I held a baby bunny in my hands this weekend as he lay dying. I’d found him and his sibling Friday night, but despite my best efforts to keep the dogs away from their nest, my terrier got ahold of one of them anyway Sunday morning. He was so sweet, so perfect, but for the bleeding wounds seeping into his fur. By the time I got both of them to the vet, the injured one and the one that had been spared, I couldn’t tell if the injured one was gone or not. He was so very, very still. I handed him over in one box, and his littermate over in another. The gal at the desk told me that they’d check him out, and if they couldn’t save him, they’d set him free from pain. The unhurt bunny would go to an animal rehabilitation shelter and, with any luck, would eventually be put back in the wild.
Before I left the house, as I held the baby bunny in my hand, I cried for him, and wondered why I was being presented with yet another lesson on death in a year rife with them. First my A, then my little dog, and now this bunny who became my responsibility the minute I found him and his sibling. Was it really necessary?
The strange thing is that each new lesson doesn’t seem like piling on. It doesn’t seem like it will break me, a last emotional and spiritual straw in the form of a baby bunny. And that’s what I would expect. Instead, the message I feel like I’m getting is, “See…death is a part of life…it’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about, nothing to rail against. It happens suddenly, slowly, accidentally. It happens. It just is.” And I am sad, but not devastated. Not like I was when A left. And despite these more recent losses, his is still the one I continue to have the most difficulty with. That is to be expected, of course. Though in truth it is not the loss per se that weighs heavy on me; it is just his absence I feel. It is, in my mind and heart, a subtle but significant distinction. And yet, I have little doubt that what I have learned because of losing him has brought me to this place. Such a paradox, where the worst thing in the world that I never wanted to happen would be the thing that taught me that the worst thing in the world may not be the worst thing in the world after all. Not permanently, anyway.
I can draw no certain conclusions; it still seems too early in this journey to even have an inkling of what it all means. But what I feel is clear, and I am reminded of Julian of Norwich, who said, “"All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well." And there are moments lately when I believe that.