A Field of Sorrow, Hard Frozen

Honors to the Fallen

In this photo, Tiny Tiger arranges a memorial to the smallest member of our herd. Story below.

Trigger warning: animal death.







I was shoveling the snow off our deck on this morning, when I looked down to the right, by the house, and spotted a very sad sight: a dead fawn in the snow.  

I called my husband out to look and then we lifted it into my old yard cart; I took the fawn's body into our little woods. Then I sat on the front porch and just bawled my heart out: big, loud, racking sobs of anguish.

This was one of "our" fawns, one of the smallest members of our herd. In summertime, there were five deer - a doe, a young buck, a younger doe, and two fawns - and they spent most of the hottest days camped out in the shade under our deck. The deck seemed to mean comfort and safety for them, and we were happy to offer them such simple hospitality.

By the marks in the snow, I gathered the fawn had been hit by a car sometime overnight, after most of the snow had fallen. It tried its best to get back to its safe spot under the deck. Its body had fallen 10 feet away, where it lay and melted the snow; and then it lifted itself up and dragged itself further. But then it died, just a few feet away from the deck.

It broke my heart, the poor little thing. Its body weighed less than my fully packed backpack. And we marveled at how strong its will was to live, to get back home to its "safe" space, to Home, where everything would be okay.

So it was a day marred by deep sorrow. In the afternoon, Tiny Tiger made a strange request. He asked if we could print out a photo of the fawn, from better days, in sweet summertime, and go make a memorial in the yard.

T. Tiger said he hoped that we could remember the fawn that way: happy, full of life. And so I did as he asked, and I printed out one of the photos, and we made it into a sign. And we took our sign into the yard, where there was snow, and the cold wind blew.

We arranged our memorial amid the footprints of the last living steps our fawn took on this earth. We wished for rose petals to scatter here, but alas, we were fresh out of rose petals. So T. Tiger made some hearts, and we hoped those would do. (In our hearts, they are rose petals. . . .)

Rest easy, little one.

You are Home.

For my soundtrack song, I couldn't decide between these two, so I'm including them both. First is the song I decided on last night: If I Needed You, written by Townes Van Zandt, made famous by Don Williams and Emmylou Harris, and sung so gorgeously most recently by Rachel Bradshaw and Jamey Johnson.

Then there is this one, which I just came across this morning. It's the Boss, from last night's Tonight Show, and I think he did a fine, fine version of a Commodores classic: Nightshift.



Note: the title of this blip is based on a line in a favorite poem written by Sheenagh Pugh, called Sometimes.