Episode 5: RIP Milo: Love Doesn’t Die

We’ve lost 6 animals in the last 3 years on our farm: five guanacos and one goat. Now, as a therapist, I’ve sat with so many dear clients in the grips of death and tragedy and the pain that floods in when we lose loved ones. And I’ve faced my fair share of grief personally. But when my goat Milo died, I was hit like a brick.  

You’d think that my familiarity with grief and loss would help me when Milo and our 5 guanacos died. But it didn’t. And after talking it through with Greg and some other special people, I’ve come to understand that this new loss experience was different than the others I’ve experienced in the past. It was different because it didn’t come with a ready made ritual or a way to communicate what happened. There was no Shiva or Wake, or even a plan for what to do after we said ‘goodbye.’ There was no narrative or story to provide comfort. And I needed that. I needed a story and a ritual that soothed me. Because without that, I was just left with unresolved sadness and a nagging feeling of not knowing what to do if it happened again. Honestly, I was just ready to quit the whole thing because it was all too much.

So, I went on a mission to find the answer. To make a story. To create a ritual that provides comfort and solace. And I actually found one. But more importantly in the process I realized I had forgotten to ask myself one of my favorite questions. It’s a pivotal question–one that I’ve asked every client who is searching to resolve something. This episode is about my own answer to that question. And how it helped me shift from feeling swallowed up by grief to being able to love the animals again. 

I think of it like this: when disease strikes or tragedy happens, and we are left with the burden of loss. We can feel tackled, taken out, like we’ve fallen to our knees and can’t get up. But life goes on. Animals have to be fed, children need to be bathed, and work calls. And even though it might not feel like it, the love doesn’t stop. It doesn’t just evaporate into thin air. And sometimes it’s really tough to remember that.

So, in the depths of grief, it matters how we proceed. It matters what stories we tell ourselves about our losses. If we answer the question, “What would make all the difference in the world?” And then we imagine a story that brings that to life, it helps us cope. The story, even if it only exists in imagination, actually gives us room to fall apart and then get back up and keep going. Which is powerful.  

See, in coping this way, we find capacity to remember the essence from which grief comes; which is love and joy and all of the beautiful moments we’ve experienced with the ones we’ve lost.  

You might think this episode is about grief, but I want you to know–it’s actually about resilience. And I think the message might be one of the most important ones I have to share. In my search for something that would soothe my grief over the loss of our six animals, I’m going to share my conversation with Lee Rankin of Apple Hill Farm, who overcame the loss of her very first alpacas when they were attacked by a mountain lion. 

I also want to share the compassionate and articulate message from EB Bartels, who wrote the book, Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter. She has touching examples of how people grieve the loss of their animal companions. And, it was super raw, but Greg and I revisited some of the feelings we’ve been carrying, and came to a more comforting place together. My wish in sharing this story is that you get ideas about what might help you answer the question, “What would make all the difference in the world?” And, in the end, help you find comfort, too.

There are many things that someone thinks about when starting a farm and raising animals. But there are many more things that probably never cross their mind, until they experience it.

“I had no idea that ranching meant losing animals to disease,” Greg told me one day.

“Isn’t that just like we skipped over that bullet point, or wherever it was,” I responded. “We just had it in our naive sort of idea, or dream, that that part was not included.”

“Right? Just wasn’t there,” Greg said.

“It wasn’t there. And we weren’t prepared. We didn’t even have the framework of how it was supposed to go,” I said. 

“It just didn’t occur to me,” Greg said. “I mean, I feel really ignorant and stupid. And I mean, why? How do you not know that? How do you not realize that? That people who raise animals lose moms to childbirth, and babies to childbirth? At a minimum all the time. And we intended to breed these animals. We intended to have them for a long time, and it just never occurred to me that we would be losing some.”

“Why do you think it never occurred to you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he quietly said. “I mean, for one thing, they’re so big and strong and intimidating.”

“So, they seem invulnerable,” I said.  

Greg nodded.

“But other than that, I don’t have an explanation,” he added.

“Well, I mean, we didn’t exactly go to farming school where we might have been exposed to that kind of stuff,” I surmised. 

“I was not in 4H in high school,” Greg acknowledged.

It’s so strange to me that Greg and I were so naive in our thinking. We’ve both faced the last days of many pets: beloved dogs, kitties, a cockatiel, and even a few pet rats. But somehow, we jumped into this whole guanaco adventure like it was different. Like we had decades with these animals and didn’t think about the end. 

When it did happen, when Cooper and Andes and Ace and Coacher all suffered the same urinary blockages in too close a succession to one another, we weren’t prepared. And when Kate’s body could no longer absorb the nutrition she needed because of the calcifications in her stomach, we went into shock. And finally, when our beloved Pygora goat, Milo, went the path that so many others do, when his urinary blockage couldn’t be repaired, we sobbed. After each death, I couldn’t cope with the sadness. The only thing I could think of was to try to protect myself from more grief. So I started to find ways to quit the whole farm. To run away and never have to be sad again. But that’s such a twisted thing, because the pain of quitting, of finding new homes for all of our animal family, carried just as much grief. I had to find a different way of coping. 

“The aftermath part, what I have felt myself doing, and you’ve been very privy to it is basically saying, “I quit, I can’t take it, I can’t do it,” I explained to Greg. “And the pain of losing the animal that we just lost, gets all muddled up with, ‘Now I have to say goodbye to all these, the rest of these animals, because I can’t bear any more pain. And I’m going to find a place to ship them off to because I need to protect myself from the pain of this loss.’ And that, I think, I don’t want it to be such an automatic cut-off like that. Like how do I, how do we deal with the pain? Or how do I deal with the pain in another way, that doesn’t cause me to reject all of the beauty and love that I have for these animals?” 

“Yeah, and sometimes even the little bit of joy you’ve shared with them, you know, as they’re doing weird, funny things,” Greg added.

“Right. Because to imagine, quitting, and getting rid of them, is the pain of not having that joy and not sharing that relationship anymore,” I said. And imagining other people having responsibility to these beloved beasts.”

“We do need to find some way of saying ‘goodbye’ that is more comforting than what we now have,” Greg concluded.

Fellow rancher, Lee Rankin, has been in this grief-stricken mentality before.

“I drove up the driveway, and there’s an alpaca laying in the driveway,” she recalled of one particularly gruesome event. “And I’m like, “wait a second, what’s going on?” So I get out and I go in and there’s little Wildcard dead. The fencing is everywhere. It’s just destroyed, and that’s saying something because we had high-tensile electric fencing. And it was everywhere. Like coils of metal everywhere. And then I couldn’t find the others. So then I had to go searching to find Mojo, Frosty, and Millie.”

Lee runs Apple Hill Farm in North Carolina. And she knows a lot about dealing with the loss of animals. This is her story of when a deadly mountain lion viciously attacked her farm.  

“So I found Mojo and frosty up in the big barn. And they were alive,” Lee recalled. “And they were, with alpacas they call it “sternal,” if they’re sitting up. So their necks are up. And they were alive. And they were sternal in the barn. They had clearly been attacked; they had just these weird neck wounds. But I couldn’t find Millie. So I’m like on the cell phone, I’ve already called for help. I’ve called to get a vet to come to help. And so I’m still like just ‘dialing for dollars’ on the phone while I’m looking for everybody. That’s when I find Millie out of the wood line. And she is so full of fleece. So she has lots of fiber on her, so you can’t see what her wounds are, but she was almost ripped in two.”

When I asked Lee to have a conversation with me, all I knew was that she had somehow continued on after this terrible event. I wanted to know how she was able to cope so well. I had no idea how much she would inspire me.

“How did you make sense out of that? How did you come back?” I asked her regarding the attack.  

“You know,” Lee started. “The thing that’s interesting about a farm is that the farm goes on. And this has proven itself over the many years I’ve been doing this, it’s been almost 20 years. So, an animal dies, and in the next 2 hours you’ve still got to feed the other animals. You don’t get to stop. Like, we don’t have a 3-day wake. And we just carry-on in the midst of it. And I think that there’s something really wise about that, because we carry-on anyway. Generally, we have to on some level, but there’s an element of carrying on that love. I mean, maybe it’s because I still have other animals to care for. And I joke about it like it’s a toilet; you flush it and it fills right back up. It’s the most amazing thing. Love doesn’t stop it. You know, it may hurt. It may slow down. It may be hard. But it goes on.”

Lee continued explaining her experience with death and life. 

“So there’s so many times that when we have something horrible happen, we just have to carry-on. And when you have a kid, you still gotta feed them dinner. You can’t just not feed them dinner because an animal died, right? It’s like, the next thing goes on. And then they want to play and then they need a bath. And then they… I mean, it’s very similar to parenting, in that you just have to carry on. You don’t get to stop.”

When Lee told me this, I got so emotional because her words put me in-touch with the feeling of all that love. She was right; love in the form of farm chores, or taking care of a child, or all the carrying-on we do, doesn’t stop. Even if it feels like it got flushed away, it fills right back up again. And this was so moving, because it was my answer to that important question: “What would make all the difference in the world?” For me, knowing that my love for the animals who died still exists and still can be felt by them and by me, (not disappeared or erased), THAT would make all the difference in the world.  

“So, the thing is, we’ve, we’ve lost six animals now,” I sadly explained to Lee.

“Oh, my gosh!” she said, trying to comfort me.

“Five guanacos and one goat,” I clarified. “And  I love what you’re saying; that the farm life goes on, you have to still feed, you have to still take care of those animals. And you do still love the animals that are here. But one of the reasons why I’m sort of talking this through and hearing other people’s stories is that it’s all on the table. 

“It’s like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’” Lee said, finishing my sentence for me.

“I don’t know if I can do it anymore. I don’t know if I have it in me,” I admitted. “And my husband says I don’t know if I’m cut out for this. Right? Our vet says “you guys have had really bad luck.” We’ve done a whole bunch of insights, but there’s no guanaco expert that’s going to tell us what we’re doing wrong. Instead, she says “you’re not doing anything wrong.” She’s really a camelid expert, and I trust her,” I said. 

“One of the ways that I deal with it was we have a second farm. It’s my mother’s farm,” Lee explained. “It’s called Heavenly Acres. That’s her farm. My mother’s not alive any more. So that’s where my animals go when they pass. We actually joke in the moments after a death, and it’s like, “yeah, we’ll get a ‘thank you’ note for that one,” Lee said, imagining her mother’s reaction to gaining a new animal friend in heaven.

“Oh, that’s so beautiful,” I said. “So they live on.”

“They live on. When we lost our first llama, I was like, “yeah, they got enough alpacas up there (in heaven). They need a llama!” ” Lee joked. And I have yet to have an animal die that didn’t just break me and send me into sobs. I mean it. I talk about it like it’s not a big deal, but it’s like it always just levels me. And it takes about 3 days and then I’m better, and you know, I say ‘I have to go on. I don’t get to stop.’ ”

Not only did Lee have the answer to my question, “What would make all the difference in the world?” But she also told me that beautiful story. It’s a story that helps her and all the people who work on her farm. It’s not only comforting, but it invites a ritual where they can all say their goodbyes and do a send off to Heavenly Acres. When we have this kind of coping, it gives us a basis to face death and to talk about it together. Which is so, so comforting.

“I just think we don’t talk about that stuff. We’re funny about death. We don’t talk about death,” Lee said.

“No, we don’t,” I agreed.

“And we fear it. It’s like this black-box. It’s just like, we’re in denial. And we fear it.”

Author and animal expert, EB Bartels, wrote the book Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter. She has an interesting take on the death of our animal-friends.

“I think that people really don’t give themselves space or know where to find space to talk about these things, but people really want to talk about them,” she said.

I wanted to talk to EB about her research and what she found when interviewing many, many people about their experiences of animals dying. I wanted to see if she could help me find a way to move forward in the aftermath of our animals dying.

“When you said before you feel like people really need my book, I think that part of why is because people self-censor their grief when it comes to animals because there are so many messages that we receive,” EB said. “It’s like where we’re told it’s just an animal. “Oh, your cat died? You’re going to get another one,” like, you know? Yeah, sure. Maybe they are going to get another one, but not right now. Even if they get another animal it’s not going to be the same exact animal as was before. So I think people really self-censor themselves.”

“Well, since my podcast is mainly about farm life and raising fiber animals, we have and we have a herd of guanaco and we have goats, and we have rabbits and they’re all raised for their fiber,” I explained. “And we are brand new to the farm life, and have suffered losses like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve had beloved dogs in my life, and so has my husband, but we were completely amazed when we lost our first guanaco. It hit us like a bunch of bricks. Like, how could we care so much about a farm animal? What do you think about that?” I asked EB. “I mean, is there a difference between loving farm animals and loving companion pets?”

“It’s interesting,” EB acknowledged. “A lot of people have asked me about that. And a lot of people have also asked me about things like, “does grief vary based on the type of animal? Do people grieve dogs harder than guinea pigs?” And my experience, at least in just all the people I’ve interviewed, both pet owners and  veterinarians, is that it matters more the type of relationship you have with the animal, more than the type of animal or the animal’s technical role.”

EB articulated something so validating for me. It’s something that Greg and I think and talk about quite a lot. 

“Well for me, I just It was never just a livestock kind of relationship,” greg said about our guanacos. “Especially because they’re so hard to get along with that, I think you end up investing a lot in your ability to get along with them.” 

“Yeah,” I said. “But “investing a lot”, what does that mean? Like, trying really hard, or spending a lot of time, or learning all of how to approach them, when to approach them, all of them, all of their subtle body language, their idiosyncrasies, age, difference in personalities?” I asked. 

“Yeah,” Greg agreed. “As a way of trying to forge a workable relationship with them. Otherwise, they would have been, or would be very difficult to work with. And in the process I did develop bonds.”

“Of course,” I said. “ It’s like they’re part of your family or part of your life? They’re there. There’s a knowing there, right? That is similar to a dog.”

“Exactly, or a cat or whatever” Greg admitted.” I mean, it’s not that you can cuddle with them. And you wouldn’t want to anyway, but there is a part of that you know who they are, and they know who you are. Even if they look at you, most of the time is just the purveyor of food. They know you’re bringing their dinner to them, or their breakfast, they still know you. They expect you. They feel safe around you. It just goes both ways, I think.”

“I think you describe it really well,” I said. “I guess what I’m trying to say is I think it’s like I didn’t know what it was going to be like to have relationships with guanacos. So I guess I didn’t have any reference other than what it was like to take care of a dog, really, or a cat or a rat, or, you know, a family pet bird, or whatever. I guess I didn’t have any other kind of idea to even compare it to. And so I guess, that’s another reason why I felt, I still feel like I’m bonded with them, and they’re part of our family.”

“Right. Right,” Greg peacefully said.

So Greg and I bonded with our animals and made a family of sorts. We approached our relationships with them just as we would any other living being. And we experience joy and love, despite all the challenges. When our grief didn’t give us access to the love, we were suffering. And I wanted to know why EB thought people all over the world do this– open themselves up to this sadness.

“To me, it feels like there’s obviously something that is so worth it about the joy of spending a life with animals that outweighs even how sad and hard the end is,” EB said. “Like, we do it because it makes us happy and brings us joy and enriches our life in a way and even if it ultimately does have to end and it’s sad, It’s worth it and makes our lives better.”

I shared Lee Rankin’s story about her deceased mother’s Heavenly Acres with EB, and wanted to know if she had other examples of people creating a story for themselves that helped them process their losses. 

“I think people are really hard on themselves when animals die in general, because they feel like they screwed up because they violated their end of the bargain,” EB said. “So I love hearing that she has this narrative that helps her process, because death is part of owning animals. It’s just you can’t deny that. I love that idea of imagining or believing that the animals are in this different place. And I think a lot of people often turn to their own faith, or religions that they were brought up with, as different ways to imagine and process, like, “Okay, the people I love are in heaven. And why wouldn’t then the animals also be there?” My dad, when I was growing up, liked to explain to me that he believes that all beings have some sort of soul. And he imagines that death is like returning energy to the universe. And we’re like, in this warm light together. And I always think about that, too. I firmly believe humans are not smart enough to understand what happens after death, even though we like to think we are. So I like to imagine that there’s some sort of way that we all reconnect and you are reunited with that feeling and spirit or warmth, or whatever it is.”

EB’s words really connected with me.

“There’s this poem,” she continued. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Rainbow Bridge? It’s like this concept of your animals, if they die before you go, then they wait at the Rainbow Bridge for you, which like goes into heaven. And when you finally die, you go and you meet them and you go over together. And a lot of people I know, even people who maybe would be critical of that and think it’s like hokey or silly or whatever, they really hang on to that idea. And it makes them feel better to think and imagine like, “my pets are waiting for me.” ”

“So I think that adds comfort, too. I think especially for your own death because thinking about death is scary,” EB explained. “And if you imagine that, you can picture the scene of all the animals you’ve ever loved are waiting for you–that feels comforting.” 

I told Greg the story about Heavenly Acres Farm that Lee told me, and the poem about the Rainbow Bridge that EB told me. 

“So the story that Lee Rankin told me, from Apple Hill Farm, it was so precious,” I explained. “They’ve had their share of losses, and that they have another farm. And it’s called Heavenly Acres, and her mom manages that farm, and her mom has passed. And so they send the animals to heavenly acres, so that her mom can take care of them. I don’t know what my beliefs are. But that touches me deeply to think of that. That’s a story that they can tell on their farm. And they even joke about it. You know, “Mom, you don’t have a cow, and we’re sending you a cow,” ” I joked. 

“And it provides some solace,” Greg said.

“And then Eb, who wrote that wonderful book, Good Grief, talked about the story of the Rainbow Bridge, that some people believe that all the animals that you’ve lost in your lifetime, wait for you at one side of the Rainbow Bridge. It just makes me…” I paused and thought. “It chokes me up thinking that when you die, you go there and they’re all waiting for you and you cross the rainbow bridge together. And you’re just with your animals, you know?”

“So it reminds me of something your mother told me about religion, and one of our conversations, which is, the idea that you would be reunited with people that you’ve loved and shared a great deal with during your life in their lives. The idea that you would be reunited with them at some point. She doesn’t care if it’s true or not. She just finds it so comforting. Right? That’s all that matters to her.”

“I love that you don’t have to spend time debating the truth of it,” I said. “The truth of it, you just…”

“You just feel the comfort that it provides you. And that’s enough,” Greg finished.

“What do you think of that for our farm?” I asked.

“You know, I always struggle with truth versus comfort. So I’m in dire need of the comfort,” Greg admitted.

“I think the bottom line is that we get to tell whatever story we want. Right?” I stated. “We get to make whatever story we want. And the story that we have now doesn’t provide comfort. It’s just there. Just a ‘and we lost six animals. And there’s a period, and there’s an end.’ What do you say or do after that?”

“I think that’s what we’re both struggling with.” Greg said. “But I think you’re right. We do need to find some way of saying goodbye that is more comforting than what we now have.”

I told Greg, “One of the things that you’ve said to friends is that ‘there are too many ghosts on the farm.’ “

“That’s because I’ve seen them,” Greg said firmly.

“Obviously there’s a story there. Right?” I asked. “And so what would that story be about then?” 

“That I see the animal spirit coming to greet me when I’m bringing food,” he said.

“And that it’s painful. You don’t like it,” I said.

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Greg clarified. It reminds me of the pain of missing the animal. There’s also part of it that is a little bit comforting that that animal spirit is still hovering around here. So it’s both really not an issue of liking it or not liking it. It’s an issue of revisiting all of my feelings that come up in that moment.” 

“I’m just sort of thinking about that idea of having a story that’s comforting. Is there a story that could be more comforting about when an animal spirit visits you here on the farm?” I wondered.

“Yes, I mean, maybe I should realize they’re coming to say ‘hi.’ They still want their food,” Greg said.

“They still want their food…” I chuckled with him.

After our conversation, Greg and I went about our farm business and thought on the topic. The way I think is with my hands. I make things. So, I decided to create bricks from an old craft kit I used to have at my office. I got some mortar and mixed it all up and poured it into the brick mold. And then, with the little letters that came in the kit, I stamped each of our dead animals’ names into a brick. And while the mortar set, I walked around a bit trying to think of where they should go. Since I had figured out that feeling the love for the animals that have passed as well as the animals who are still here would make all the difference in the world for me, I decided to put the gravestones under the jasmine and wisteria arbor. Right under the wind telephone.  

Side note: Yes, we have a wind telephone. It’s an old rotary dial phone with a cord and metal cradle to hold the receiver. I’ve mounted it on the arbor structure so that I can sit on the huge rock that Greg calls “meditation stone” and call my grandparents. They are all dead, but when I pick up that phone and dial their number (which I can still remember from childhood), they seem very close and I can hear their support when I most need it.  

Anyway, I decided that the namesake bricks fit near the phone in a perfect way. And that this could be part of the story. So, Greg and I nestled the bricks into the dirt there together. And it felt a bit like we were creating a memorial as we found places for each of the animals’ names.  

“Okay, if we’re sitting or if we’re standing here, I guess in front of or underneath our official memorial, did you arrive at a story that was comforting for you?” I asked Greg.

“I think I sort of walked away feeling that it was just enough that I love them and still do. And that being part of life and sharing it with them was its own reward, and something I’ll just carry with me. And that is somewhat comforting,” Greg said.

“Okay, so I just need to make a phone call. Do you want to talk to anybody?” I asked Greg as I approached our memorial wind phone.

“Not right now,” Greg said solemnly.

I dialed a number–my finger turning the old-fashioned number dial, as wind chimes clanged in the background. 

“Hello. I miss you,” I said speaking into our wind phone to my deceased grandparents. “So we have some stones here for you to look after,” I said, referencing the bricks with the names of our animals. “I just wanted to let you know they’re here, and I hope you keep your eye out for them, and you love them as much as we did and still do.”

I paused for a moment with Greg nearby.

“Okay, bye,” I said, hanging up with wind phone. 

“Thank you for doing that,” Greg whispered. 

So, we are still working on all of the details of the story, but we certainly have the first step to the process.  We have the answer to the question, “What would make all the difference in the world.” And we’ve both  made peace with this important idea–that the love doesn’t end. It just keeps going, just like all of the rest of life. And we have a ritual. If we lose another animal, they will receive a personalized brick and be forever honored under the wind telephone. The story that is emerging is one about how they might come visit every once in a while, and how lovely that could feel if we let it in. And how maybe, all those other people on the other end of the phone-line could look after our beloved guanacos and Milo the goat.  

It’s taken a lot to get here–where the grief feels a bit more settled, less raw. But it was worth it because I don’t want to quit our farm-life. And I don’t want to find new homes and say goodbye to these amazing creatures. 

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you are in the midst of a struggle or loss that causes you pain, it’s worth it to ask the question, “What would make all the difference in the world?” And when you find that answer, make a story that supports it. Imagine it fully. It can be creative and full of fantasy or stuff that doesn’t happen in real life–just allow yourself to tell it like it was a movie, or the best book you’ve ever read. Then bring it to life by living into it–even if you don’t fully believe it. Because comfort and soothing goes a long, long way. And at some point, the stories will give us room to feel the love again, and even experience the joy we thought we’d lost.

Thanks for listening. If you’d like to hear more stories about our farm life and what we learn when we live close to nature and use our hands to make things from what we raise, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast listening app–or, if you want to be notified every time we post a new episode, you can sign up for those notifications on our website: www.afiberlife.com

This podcast is a production of the Bright Sighted Network.