6710 Grand

 It always breaks my heart.  When love ends for someone, I’m sad.  And then I’m scared.  Anytime I hear about a divorce I panic.  Sometimes it’s a celebrity but sometimes it’s someone I know.  Family friends and relatives that have been a part of my life since I was born are now gone.  Or maybe just different.  A celebrity couple whose love story I could wrap my arms around and squeeze are now separating.  An author of books about living life as a Christian working mom I’ve devoured and tried to internalize reveals that her marriage is ending.  It happens over and over.   No one is safe.   And that means I’m not either.   Every time it happens, I want to find my husband and climb into his arms and hold on tight.   I want to check in and make sure we’re ok.   I want to remind him (and myself) that I’m desperately in love with him and if he ever decides to leave, I’m coming too. Sometimes I’m amazed and awed at my marriage.   “We’re doing it right!” I say and pat myself on the back.

She sat next to me for 3 hours as we drove together.  I’d never spent so much time with a live chicken before.  Peggy O, as she’d been named, wasn’t going to make it.  We all knew it.  Maybe she knew it too.  She was an elderly bird—one we’d rescued years before.  She’d lived a long and happy life—much longer and happier than anyone might have expected.  But now, her leg was in such pain that her quality of life was almost nothing.  She was in constant pain and there was nothing more that could be done for her.  She needed her pain eased.   The only way to do that was to end her life.   But that, it seemed, was easier said than done.   I’ve had dogs and cats—dogs that needed to be similarly released and a cat whose life ended very suddenly and without explanation.   It’s never easy, but it’s also not hard—not like this was.   Peggy was hurting.   But there was no veterinarian who would see her—they just don’t see chickens. Why not?   Who knows?   This was not the day I was expe