Violet

Our goat, Violet, died yesterday. She gave birth Saturday to four baby does. We don't know for sure if there were complications but it appears that milk fever was the cause. It is not really a fever but a lack of calcium in the blood that causes a heart attack. My wife called to tell me the news and I left work early yesterday and buried her outside the goat pen.

Violet and Pepper were our first goats. We got them about five years ago when they were a week old. We bottle fed them. Bottle feeding makes goats very tame. Violet and Pepper were like two big, old puppy dogs. My wife would take them out in the field to graze and she would pray the rosary. These two goats became her companions. And they gave birth to some more goats and we kept some until our little goat herd is know up to 16, 15 now that Violet is gone.

My wife has taken Violet's death pretty hard. Grief is a funny thing. It is not something one every totally gets over. And the next occasion for grief is smashed into and added on to the previous grief. Like the Bruce Cockburn song-"You get bigger as you go; Memories like boats in tow."

My wife has had a lot of grief and Violet's death is a reminder of all that she has lost: a husband, a father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews not to mention things like health, careers, friends and a few hopes and dreams.

The saints teach us that we can unit our sufferings with Christ, as Saint Pauls says in Colossians 1:24 "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church". It is a mystery that our suffering, united to Christ can help redeem the world.

So, in some way, Violet's death and my wife's grief is a gift to the world being redeemed by Christ. May God have mercy on us all and grant us peace.