Sweet Dreams, Lulu

John, and Jesse James Carroll walking the burial site

We buried Lulu early this morning, not long after sun-up.

Jesse begins digging the hole that will be Lulu's grave

 
When you bury a beloved family pet in the back yard, perhaps you have a simple ceremony, wrapping the pet in a favorite blanket, and leaving a favorite toy with him in a small grave you've dug yourself. You whisper your good-byes amid tears of love and sorrow, and perhaps you leave a small marker, or plant a flowering bush as a reminder. I've done it many times myself.

Hard, dense clay soil. Difficult even for the bobcat

On a farm, however, when you're burying an animal much larger than a family pet, especially in hot weather, you need a bigger area and a deeper hole, something larger than a shovel to dig with, and speed, in order to get ahead of the decay.

Yesterday, John was able to find a man who agreed to bring his bobcat over and bury Lulu for us. Jesse James Carroll, quite a character we found out, came over yesterday afternoon and looked over the area where he would dig the hole. He is a very nice man, and he quoted us a very reasonable price for the job. He was also quite sympathetic to our loss. That was a nice bonus for us, we thought.

The last scoop being removed

From start to finish, the whole process took about 45 minutes. The "hole" was not really a hole, but a scooped out area deep on one end and shallow on the other. When it was ready, John dragged the container (an old water trough) with Lulu in it, down into the hole and, very unceremoniously, dumped Lulu into the deep end.

Although I took lots of pictures of the entire process, including pictures of Lulu in her grave, I have chosen not to post many of them here, desiring to be sensitive to readers who might find such pictures too difficult to view. However, I did include one picture that shows Lulu already partially covered with soil. I thought it was important to the goals of this blog to show the full reality of farm life, and how we must deal with some things in a very pragmatic way, even when they affect us emotionally.

I said my good-byes to Lulu yesterday, but spoke another quiet good-bye this morning as the first scoop of dirt fell over her. John too, I found out later, said his good-byes during the burial process. Neither of us cried. It's difficult to muster tears when there's a stranger digging a huge hole in your back yard with giant machinery. We were both too busy watching the bobcat jerk back and forth and around to think about how we were feeling about losing Lulu. It was rather nerve-wracking, actually, and we were both relieved when it was over.


John and I had to leave rather quickly after Lulu was buried this morning. We had been scheduled for more than a month to attend a gun safety class at the Sheriff's Department, and we were already going to be late. So we had no time for a ceremony for Lulu's passing. We're okay with that. It doesn't mean we loved Lulu any less than we did the other pets we've lost and cried over, and buried with ceremony. It just means that even on a farm the business of life keeps us moving forward, preventing us from standing still in any one moment for too long.

Lulu In Our Hearts

Lulu died today.

Of all the aging animals on our farm that I daily expect to find dead, Lulu wasn't one of them.

In her younger days: Lulu in 2007

It was very unexpected. She was getting older, and she couldn't get around as well as she used to. She'd been experiencing some constipation this last week, but that was all, we thought. We certainly didn't think she was going to die from constipation. John called the veterinarian two days ago for advice, but they weren't a lot of help over the phone. I don't think we'll ever know what killed Lulu, but I do know we will miss her very, very much.

Lulu taking a cool dip on a hot summer day

I was outside this morning, and although I didn't look in on her, I did hear her give her usual morning grunt as I passed by and said good morning to her; but my dad went outside at Noon to give Lulu a banana (she loves bananas), and she was gone. Even though I heard Lulu grunt this morning, I think she died in her sleep. I don't think she was in any pain, just some discomfort, maybe, and that's a good thing, isn't it?

2009, at her heaviest, just after a Spring mud bath

Taking a walk across the yard

John adopted Lulu during his second marriage. It was the wife who wanted the cute little pot bellied piglet that had to be "formally" adopted; but it was John who fed her and took care of her as she grew, played with her, fell in love with her, and kept her when the wife left.

It's John who told me the story about Charlie, the chocolate lab puppy chasing the piglet around the house, and the piglet chasing Charlie; and John who calls Lulu "the best little foot warmer ever!" It's John who would scratch Lulu's belly and talk love to her, feed her chocolates as treats, and complain like all heck when Lulu waddled too slowly down the patio in front of him blocking his way.

Looking for a sunny spot on a winter day

The first time I met Lulu, she bit me. Well, she tried. Or maybe she was just trying to let me know that she was there, the primary "female" in John's life for several years before I showed up. She came up quietly behind me and nipped at my calf. I knew at that moment, when I jumped in surprise, that Lulu was sizing me up, and letting me know that she was no push over.


My family raised pigs when I was young. We raised them to resell or butcher, but invariably there would be a standout that we turned into a pet, if only for a little while. So, when I came to 5~Acre Farm, it was easy to accept Lulu as one of the "motley crew" of four-legged, independent personality creatures that John and I had gathered around us; one more grunting, begging yard-baby greeting me whenever I stepped out the back door.

Bedding down under the ramp at the back door

Lulu was easy to love. She trotted around the yard with the dogs, ate their food and hers, and loved a good scratch behind the ears. I could always count on her to relieve me of kitchen scraps, especially before we got the chickens. I'd often run out the back door with a special treat just for her. She'd grunt and complain in a high pitched squeal if I had to wake her, but it would drop to a low grunt as she sniffed the treat and gobbled it down in a "Gimme! Gimme!" style.

Winter sunbathing

I have many wonderful memories of Lulu... Lulu sunbathing, Lulu in the shade, Lulu in the kiddy pool, Lulu eating chocolate! But I have two favorite memories of Lulu. The first is from the fall of 2004, when we had a huge crop of grapes come in. It was the first year I started canning, and I began with the grapes. I did a batch of grape jam, several jars, and was planning on many more when I got a call from a family member who was having an emergency. I left two 5-gallon buckets of grapes untouched, and was gone for a week. When I returned, John had not done anything with the grapes. They were still sitting next to the fridge, filled with fruit flies! I took both buckets outside and decided to dump a good bit of them in Lulu's dish. Of course, Lulu dug right in, and really enjoyed those grapes. Later on, she was acting funny, waddling around, singing, and harassing the dogs. It took me a while to realize she was drunk! The grapes had fermented! The next morning she was pretty quiet and still. My guess, a nasty hangover!

Lulu, in better days, strolling through the yard

My second favorite memory of Lulu is also from the fall of 2004, Thanksgiving day. This one isn't a visual memory, it's more a memory experience. Before I share it with you though, I have to explain that in those days Lulu's favorite resting spot was right at the back door. Her large bulk filled the small space at the top of the ramp, always making it difficult to come and go through the back door. In the summertime, she stayed there because she could feel the cool air blowing out from under the door; and in the wintertime, it must have been the leaking heat that kept her there. In any event, Lulu, sprawled out at the back door, though frequently annoying, more often made for a good laugh when friends and family visited, being required to "just step over the pig" because the pig wasn't about to move!

Well, on that Thanksgiving day, the house was full of family visiting for the weekend, and I was in the kitchen juggling cooking responsibilities with several different conversations and a host of questions about where "this" or "that" was. My niece, 19 at the time, loved visiting, and loved all the animals. She'd gone outside to give out treats, I think, but I wasn't really aware of her activities until I heard Lulu at the back door, grunting and squealing, loud enough that it took my attention away from everyone else standing around me. The back door was open, and I hollered out to my niece to "just step over the pig" and come on in. Lulu was still squealing in a high pitch, and even higher than that came the high pitched squeal of my niece, "I can't get in!" Forever, this memory will remind me of the little brother in A Christmas Story, who, heavily bundled against the cold, falls down in the snow and squeals, "I can't get up!" My niece sounded just like that!

So memories of Lulu are all we have now.

Today John wrapped a strap around Lulu's back legs and drug her out of her bed under the back porch. It was John who managed to get her into a protected place away from flies and sniffing dogs until she can be buried; John who got on the phone and found someone with a backhoe who could come over tomorrow and dig a hole in our little pet cemetery, and John who cleared the cemetery of brush and small trees to make room for Lulu's place. Today, it was John who insisted on doing all these things by himself, because it was John (who has loved Lulu all these years), who yelled and screamed at himself for being so busy this week that he didn't see how serious Lulu's situation really was.

Death is something everyone has to deal with sooner or later. Perhaps losing a cherished pet when we are young is a good way to introduce us to the inevitable loss of a person we love. Some of us, while we are still young, are suddenly confronted with the death of someone close. Many of us are much older the first time we lose someone. In either case, it is an agonizingly raw experience that turns us inside out and shakes us to the core of our beliefs. Death changes us. It changes our whole perspective on life. It changes us because it steals our innocence, and it introduces us to our own mortality.

When someone we love dies, it really helps to know God, to have a relationship with Christ, faith. It gives us the assurance of something else on the other side, something better than we can imagine, better than we've known here. Faith gives us the hope of life continuing, maybe in another form, but continuing. It gives us the hope of reunion, not only with our God, but with all those who have gone before us, those we remember, and those we never met who are waiting patiently to meet us. Faith in God comforts us when nothing else can, and it is unfortunate that only those who have faith (even just a little bit) can understand why this is true. 

John and I have both experienced the loss of people close to us, and here at 5~Acre Farm, we have dealt with the loss of several pets. In the eight years since I came to the farm we've lost four of the six dogs I brought with me, and Popeye, my mom's Boston Terrier (I took care of him in his last year). I hospiced each of them as they grew old and sick, and I held each one in my arms, crying and telling them how much I loved them as the Veterinarian administered the final sleep. Besides the dogs, we've also lost June cat, Stars and Stripes (ferrets), Einstein the Polish rooster, the girls (three old hens), and various hens and roosters (to illness and predators).

On a farm, the lessons of life and death are inescapable. If you're paying attention, those lessons, along with the lesson of sowing and reaping, the lesson of time and seasons, and, yes, the lesson of "the circle of life" can teach you about much more than farming. These lessons can teach us about ourselves, about others, and about this world we are passing through.

I hope, wherever you are ~ on a farm, in the suburbs, in an apartment in the city ~ that you have the chance to do more than make it from one day to the next, in this maddening competition to just survive. I hope that you have the chance to observe and pay attention to the life lessons around you that, though universal, are uniquely constructed for you. I pray that when death imposes himself upon you through the loss of someone you love, that you will have the strength to survive the impact, and the faith to know that there is yet more to come beyond this life we now know.

Lulu's temporary resting place

When God is Living in Us, and Blessings Overflow!

Kathy gets her pedicure!

It's Friday night, and my friend Kathy will be leaving tomorrow to return to Chicago. How I would love for her to stay longer! I will miss her terribly.

Kathy spent a few weeks, before she came here, praying for temperatures to be in the 80s. We didn't quite get there, but temperatures here lingered in the mid-70s for the most part. It was sometimes overcast, and there was some rain, but we also had some nice patches of warm sunshine, which Kathy soaked up sitting in a rocking chair on the back patio, or in a lawn chair out front. I didn't get any photos of this. I wish I had, but I felt it was more important to give Kathy privacy and peace while she was here.

Kathy gets her manicure!

Kathy, and her husband, Kalail, came into our lives in 2007, when we met Kathy at the little church we were attending. We didn't really get to know each other then, we just had that Sunday morning "church" kind of relationship that went on for a few months, until I realized one Sunday that Kathy was missing. The deep, comforting "Amen" that she would offer periodically from the pew behind us went unheard for a few weeks before I asked someone where she was.

Disturbing events had called Kathy back to her home state of Illinois. Several people in the church were discussing how to help, and I offered to do whatever I could. I was one of many who received Kathy's mailing address and phone number, but we would discover later, I was the only person who ever bothered to contact Kathy.

Kathy was in her 40s then, and her husband was several years older than her. Kalail had been left behind to take care of things in Georgia, and then head north. No one was taking care of him, including the pastor of our small church, and Kathy asked John and I to check on him and help him if we could. That was when we learned that Kalail had cancer. Stage four colon cancer.

We did what we could for Kalail. We committed ourselves to him and Kathy, whatever they needed. Mostly, he needed someone to talk to, to have that sense that there was a safety net there for him and Kathy. He worried more about her than himself, and, as true love goes, she was more worried for him than for herself. Well, when Kalail finally understood that we weren't making superficial promises, that we meant what we said, I think he took a long, deep breath, and relaxed a bit. We gave him a ride when he needed it, took him out to dinner, gave him a little money, and saw him on his way to Illinois. I wrote to Kathy regularly, and we stayed in touch by phone and email. Though my letter to her were meant as encouragement, I found her letters to me to be filled with faith and trust in God, bearing witness to God's great mercy, and His ability to meet every need in even the worse of circumstances. Kathy and Kalail were always thanking us, even long after the emergency had subsided; but for John and me, our reward was in knowing that they were back together and making it, together. No two people ever touched me so deeply and so significantly as Kathy and Kalail.

My mother was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in April of 2010. I was with her, caring for her when Kathy called me in May to tell me that Kalail had passed away. When he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, he was not given long to live, but it took 6 years for the cancer to finally take him. Kathy, and their love for each other held him here.

Not many of us get to experience a love that can be described as profound. Kathy and Kalail did though. I knew how much they loved each other, how much they had gone through to be together, how hard they fought the cancer and everything else that tried to come against them almost constantly. Through everything, Kathy's and Kalail's faith led them, strengthened them, encouraged them, and carried them with praise and thanksgiving to God flowing from their lips, with acute awareness of the blessings that God was continually pouring out on them, and with "exceeding great joy" in their hearts.

And even after Kalail was gone, Kathy still praised God, still saw His hand in everything, His purpose in her life, and His plan for her laying itself out before her. Such faith I have never known.

So, when Kathy and I were emailing each other over the holidays, and I saw this incredible woman growing exhausted from working three jobs, and the devil still chasing her with struggles (though her testimony is full of God's deliverance), I asked her to come visit us and let me pamper her for a while.

John and I struggle with finances, like everybody else. Money has to go a long way here to get and keep the farm in shape, and there is a lot of expensive work for us to do this year. But our priorities aren't always about money and the things we want when we see someone in need, whether that's a financial need, emotional need, or the need to be pampered.

We pinched our budget and bought Kathy a plane ticket. We scrambled to turn our storage room into a decent guest room. I filled a basket with creams and lotions and candles that I thought she might enjoy, and put fresh yellow tulips in her room to brighten it. Kathy slept on a new mattress (that she still thinks she can slip in her suitcase and take home), enjoyed plenty of good food and treats, got tons of rest, visited a gym to go swimming and sit in the sauna, and today, was treated to a massage, facial, manicure, and pedicure, followed by an ice cream sundae! She won't quit thanking us, and I keep teller her to shut up!

Kathy is flying home tomorrow. I don't want her to go, but I have to let her. I know she'll be back for (I hope) many more visits in the years to come. I don't know what it is about her that makes me love her so, but I do. Well, maybe it's God. Maybe it's God doing something that only He can do, that can only be fully understood by Him. But I know this. I know my home, and my life have been blessed by Kathy's visit this week. I am renewed in my faith by the witness of her faith.

Yes, as Kathy keeps saying, she has been very blessed this week. But somehow I think I have been blessed even more.

We'll miss you Kathy. Don't stay away too long!

Forgive Me?

Wow! It's been almost three years since I posted anything. Why? Well, would you believe it started when I grew incredibly frustrated over constant problems I was having trying to post pictures from our July 4th (2009) celebration? I tried every day for a week, then came back every few days for a couple more weeks before I finally gave up, and because I'm OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), I couldn't post anything else until I posted that. I guess time had to pass and my desire to blog had to return before my OCD could get past the disaster.

Can you forgive me for being gone for so long? I hope so.

A whole lot of things have happened in the last two-and-a-half years. It would take too long to go through all of it now, so I'll touch on various things as I get back into blogging. For now, here's a highlight of what has been going on:

On the dark side:

• My marriage came very close to ending
• My health spiraled downward
• Five Acre Farm suffered the brunt of our marital problems and my health problems
  
• My mother died, and part of me died with her

On the bright side:

• My marriage survived and was restored
• I'm getting better
• We still have the farm, our dreams, and each other
• My husband's son and his wife had their fifth child, a boy
• My Dad moved in with us after my mother died, and we love having him here
• With too many dogs already, I got a puppy for Christmas, and she is medicine to my soul
• I've been learning how to make a better blog, and I'm hoping to make this a great one

I hope I can win you back. I hope I can find new readers. I want to share so much, and I'm going to do my best to nurture this blog as though it were my child, or at least, a house plant.

Bless you all!

Michelle and John
Valentine's Day 2010











It still took another year to restore our marriage completely, but it's a much stronger marriage now.