Heartfelt Losses/ Endless Gratitudes

Goodbye to my sweet Edith, the black and white speckled Wyandotte that was one of the four earliest chicks to take up residence in my ..goodness sakes alive..dining room over a decade ago when she was only a day old.

Raised her from dining room to laundry room to the warmth of an early spring only to lose her now as she went into old lady chicken age over the speckled chicken rainbow bridge. Goodbye sweet, sweet Edith.

You join my other loved and lost feathered girls...Orphans and Adoptees...Sophie, Matilda, Penelope, Georgette, Gigi, Pia, Maxine, and Blanche and the rest of her dining bin nestmates Little Nell,Dorothy, Francine, and Angelique. Sad, sad losses, I loved and mourned them all.
 

 

 

 

 

Four at a time, batch after batch, all raised in bins...yes, with quilts on top at night!!!..in our dining room or laundry room. So much work but oh so much fun. And when the tiny grandchildren came along..oh how wonderful to visit Grandma and Grampa's funny farm of fun!

Leaving behind her human family and her feathered friends, Priscilla, Hazel, Esther, Nellie, Mildred, Clementine, Ping and  Duke. All but one raised in our house..yes, that infamous dining room you'd never know by how clean I am that I raise chickens inside as well as out. I like to keep an eye on them as tiny chicks too young for our usually cold and occasionally snowy late winters.

Here they are trying to revisit their childhood home. Darn chickens they do love their memory walks and yes, I forgot to close the dining room/patio sliding door to the back deck where free range to our girls meant "Home, Home on the Free Range" inside or out❣

 

I called them back outside and like all well behaved home raised chickens they single filed right on out that door once again!

Losing my beloved chickens, cats, and our three almost human dogs.... not to mention dozens and dozens of all of the those animals most people refuse to have in their houses as pets.....oh yes, iquanas, lizards, frogs, turtles, snakes, rats, a scorpion, a black widow spider and so many mice we had to have a Barbie Car shotgun wedding where we married two of them off before their 11 offspring were born illegitimately.

The very young children who acted as ring bears and bridesmaids for our " Mice Family Wedding of the Century" have never forgotten the fun at the Bilyeu Family Funny Farm.

And yes, it's still pretty darn crazy out here. Squirrels took over the place once my prayer flag making began. I hang blessing strips from my arches and trees out back as well as prayer flags inside and out. The squirrels love their bright colors and even more so  love lining their nest with prayers and blessings for their young.

Caught this little fellow in the act. Snipped through one side, then the other, then carted it up, up and way to his/her young's fine and well decorated home. 

Once the kids grew up and flew away to begin children, pets and farms of their own.... the fun only increased because then I channeled my crazy old lady energies into being a crazy cat lady plus big time sewing and quilting extravaganzas.

My husband has his shop. I get the house for me and the garage for fabric..ahem..storage...ahem, I meant my car and our holiday decorating bins 😊

At that point, pretty much everyone who still lived most of the time inside when they weren't escaping my frenzied fabric fun, wanted to hide and/or leave home. Here above,  a photo of Keira my very beloved magical healing energy cat. She didn't want me leaving for Alaska to care for my parents there and tried so hard to be included on the trip.

I wish I could have brought her with me now, as I was gone for several months, but she waited patiently for me and passed away after being able to spend a really loving month with me day and right before she went over the rainbow bridge. I cried for 2 weeks I loved her so.

 After we lost Keira, only her litter mate Kermit and our beloved Willow, shown above and below (my youngest daughter most favorite gift the year she turned 9.) That gift all those decades ago now, became a blessing for our entire family,

Willow lived with us as our cat during DDs college and away years and we loved our lovely fur girl so when she passed at age 16 ....after months and months of feline dementia... and me tracking her down with a flashlight day and night as she went ..blind and forgetful to sit by a small bit of water under deep grasses and have her own special adventures and times each day until dusk. Sundowning for sure.

I spent days with her in my own candlelit vigil ...petting her, talking to her and making sure she knew she was loved. Some thing I do for all of our pets when I know they are about to pass. Accidents are too horrific to sense ahead of time so those babies have much harder grieving periods. Sometimes like with humans, thry feel endless. ..But Willow was well loved with such a happy, joyfully loved life. I still cried but knew it was her time.

Then our once feral cat, Tao... who came to us on the day we buried our best friend since the 70s and neighbor of  over 20 years as he suffered a sad hiking accident and crossed the 17 year of deepest loss to join his beloved wife and 12 year daughter (my and my daughters best friends) who died in a car accident in 1997. 

After months and months of calming, befriending and finally, finally getting Tao into our house, our home and our hearts..oh we loved that boy! We brought him to the Vet to have him neutered and the vet claimed he couldn't do surgery without blood tests for contagious feline disorders. He had one... and the vet euthanized him. I still weep for the lost of that so loved boy and wish I had grabbed him up and ran screaming out of the clinic ...noooooo!

 Such is loss and such is life.  

So now, just Kermit..not a he but a she... who we were told was a he, and made croaking frog noises as a tiny kitten long years ago. Now old and barely hanging on but still here!

Kermit the hermit, our little left behind, blind and deaf in her advanced years now and senile,, she can no longer hop on top of ironing boards or go upstairs to my sewing loft. But she loves bins, baskets, and boxes and has the best life she can with all the best tins and bags of food her predecessors didn't get when they were still with us as she has other dietary challenges.

Gratitudes and deep love and los for every single pet I've ever had and all the pets my children and grandchildren have loved and lost ...my beloved grandcats.

And then the ones that I had since I was a very young child growing up on my island in Alaska.  I snuck tgem in from the cold to play in my closet or fed even more outside when my  room and closets were full and my poor mom couldn't take my big heart any more. Loved them all ..Rusty, Dusty, Lady, Pandora, Bitsy, Taffy..shown in this old photo as a kitten.... and all the ones who never made it inside but were loved and fed the best I could being a child..with scraps every day.

 

Our three soooo loved dogs from before the days before digital and now faded photographs in dozens and dozens of albums ferreted away like the little photo lover that I am...Snitzy, Gypsy, and Sparky..all crossed over, three little Schnauzers that we loved before and during our early child raising years..miss you so much our almost human beloved parts of our family! No photos of them in digital of course.

Now, I have a much loved Grandpup to pupsit and make pillows and quilts and fleece blankets and toys for..just as I do our oh so beloved three little grands!  Sweet Ocho has had such challenging but miracles abound and he survived two surgeries to be loved for much, much longer, now!

 

Now, my heart has opened up as big and as bright, as deep and as high and as wide as a heart can open from the loss of all of my pets, from the loss of friends and family that I loved with all my heart but now, it swells to bursting with love of grown children, their partners and 3 beloved grandchildren now ages 3,2, and 1. Oh the joy the such love brings!!!!!

 

As I look at my chickens now...Duke the unwanted but still loved rooster and his harem of the remaining 7 girls, I am grateful for them now, safe and sound behind our now fenced and gated back yard from marauding packs of raccoons and neighbors dogs. But of course the last batch came out knowing how to fly! 

And yes, I know about clipped wings but after trying to snip and clip Tao, I'm not willing to alter nature and if these chickens and one rooster cross over one by one, I will now tgey had soo muvh fun in trees and on coop-tops.

Someday,far far away in time, I pray,  it will be my turn.

I will fly free and over to join them and all of my loved ones. But for now, I am far happier than I am sad, far more filled with gratitude than with losses and laments.

But now, in the month when  our hearts glow brighter and love flows freely from quilts and crafts, my heart remembers all of my lost loves.  All our pets both feathered and furred, such loves one and all. The month of and for remembering giving, showing, and sharing love❣

Our tiniest grand turned 1 yesterday and as I sewed for her, I counted my blessings in word and in deed as I count them every day for her beloved 2 year old brother and precious little 3 year old cousin. Thank you Lord, for my pets, but thank you most of all for my family, here, there and forever everywhere in my heart!!!

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting... from my heart and with my hands.

i carry your heart

As my brother mourns the passing of his wife, I remind him always to remember this from his own heart....


i carry your heart
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go,my dear;
and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings



Posted on:
www.with-heart-and-hands.com

I found these heart rocks in Douglas, Alaska during my last trip in October.
We all grew up there. Myself and four brothers, and even his wife Becky, who has recently passed on from end stage kidney failure.

I found these within minutes on the beach and knew I was meant to bring them back to Oregon for my collection. I have rocks and sea shells and other wildcrafting bits and pieces all over my home.  

I have always found heart shaped rocked wherever I go. I once shared this with a family friend and she said "really? I don't think that I've ever found one."

We were canoeing in the middle of the Willamette River so when our family's canoes beached for a stretch, I searched for and found 17 heart shaped rocks that I found in just minutes. That's how easy it can be for me to find them.

I just love my heart rocks. My. heart. rocks.

My heart rocks ..with love, with joy, with caring. And that force helps with both grief and grieving.

I tell my brother..bit by bit, day by day. It hurts terribly and it may take a while, but you can do this.

You carry her heart....

Loss

In one week, our lives can go from happy and fun, to sad.


It's simple how life is, and how balance is often achieved. If I feel one emotion at too high or two low of a pitch, I know that shortly I will feel its opposite. It helps me get through so many really challenging times, but it also reminds me during the really happy ones that the yin and yang of our lives often do balance out in ways that teach us to accept the hard times as part of this challenging journey.

One of our cherished 'pet' chickens disappeared. In our world disappeared is a euphemism for someone took, and or killed her. Neither is neither acceptable or ok right now. But both are understood.

Georgette, shown above, was the most colorful of the two chickens we have now lost  this past year, with not one single sign to tell us what has happened.

And while it's sad to even admit this, she was the most beautiful of all of the chickens we have had over the past 5 or 6 or 7 years and I have missed her terribly. Beauty does not intensify loss. I'm just sharing one of the things that we did love about her. We loved her markings the same way we love our children's face..each different and unique.

 I missed her little clutch companion, Gigi, as well..she was so funny and so unusual. But Georgette had the most engaging personality and always did her crazy little sideways race to me the moment she saw me outside,  or caught a glance of me through a window. Always. For me, chickens are closer to dogs as pets than any of my cats. If they are loved and hand fed, they become so attached to their humans in really cute and quirky ways.

So, I mourn my losses this week as I celebrate life's gains. Right now, the losses are above the balance point for our animals.  There is not one single feather to determine the cause of this loss, not one clue, not one bit of evidence and this is exactly how it was with her 'sister chicken' Gigi, when she disappeared not too very long ago, as well.

Oh, I do so love my chickens. I only wish if someone knew that their dog was killing our chickens (they would have brought them home to them) that they would just let us know. We would forgive and forget as that is often nature especially when a dog gets the taste of a chicken on the run. Once a dog catches or kills a chicken, if you live on a chicken ranch, you have to choose one or the other as that dog will always chase and kill.

We used to have ducks, and oh man, did I love our ducks!!!  They were killed by a farm dog that lived over 7 acres away and the owner, who believe it or not was a friend, laughed when I told her. As farmers, a dog was a dog, a duck was a duck, and a chicken was and is,  just a chicken. And often, when people know that their pet dog has attacked and brought home a chicken before..dead or alive, they don't want to tell you. But not knowing, as those friends who have lost family members, is often far worse than knowing.

And all of our animals become our loved ones....especially to big, soft hearted me who creates connections between all living things and find connections in all signs and symbols. It is one of my gifts that I use to help others, and one of the gifts that creates more pain because of so many connections, so many heartstrings acknowledged and understood.

I love with my whole heart even if  your 'just a chicken.' I'm not as sad as I am when its my beloved cats and dogs died..I wail like a banshee over their losses. I can literally scare my husband and send him running from the house. I feel it all as deeply as I can so I know all pain to help others with all pain. But the sadness of the loss of a our pets is a lump in my heart that will take a long while to ease. Its does knife the way a human loss does, it doesn't create the huge depression or the denials as deeply. But loss is still loss.

And I hope that both of my cherished girls' endings were quick as that is all we can hope for any one that we love.

Goodbye, sweet sweet Georgette. I miss you so much! And dear little 'road runner' Gigi..you are not forgotten, either, I loved you and I miss you, too!   Our only two 'young' chickens, the ones we hoped to have for a very long time.

So, it's not really about the survival of the fittest in the chicken world. These were the best, the brightest, and by far the fastest. So sad!

I know the tide of the universe will turn once again.  And I am so deeply grateful that my husband survived his stroke on the 16th. But loss is still loss of any kind.

Good times will replace the hard, the sad, and the bad. But it takes a while to get the sad out. And sharing loss, sharing pain, sharing our stories with others, helps me ans I hope your sharing helps you.

Many of you have lost beloved family this week. You have lost husbands, and wives, and mothers, and fathers, and yes, even children.

Many of you have lost beloved pets. And I am so deeply sorry for all of those losses.

 Love is Love...no matter who you love or how you feel and express it.

Loss is Loss...on all levels and in all stages of the heart and all levels and stages of our lives.

A chicken is not a dog, or a cat. A chicken is not a beloved family member or  potential family member.

But loss of any kind hurts, so my heart with its knowing and its experiencing of all kinds of loss goes out to you as you have shared and as you feel yours.

The tide will turn once again. The waves go in, the waves go out. Know that my heart knows, shares, and understands yours.


Across the Rainbow Bridge
my blog and poetry on pet loss


Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join her and make and donate quilts to charitable causes.   Help us change the world, one little quilt, art quilt, and prayer flag at a time!

Comfort and Joy

The warmest space in our house is my lofted sewing area. Originally intended as a family room, it is long and narrow and completely open to the downstairs where a wood burning stove is our primary source of heating.  But that long and narrow lofted area ended up being perfect for quilting, as I have not one, but two spaces for quilt laying and pinning and the little storage space at the end is now used as my little sewing nook.

We've lived here since 1978 and for the past almost four years without a working heat pump..oh yes, "carpenter's wife", I am married to a builder ;-)  And while using a wood stove as much as we do involves a lot of tree and wood chopping, stacking, wheelbarrowing, and fire making, it has made for toasty warm heat during our cold winter season. And it's economical and environment as we constantly have trees downed by windy storms!

 Luckily, we finally decided to replace our aged and dysfunctional heat pump with a new one in late fall because it was in the nick of time for a huge cold spell here in Oregon.  Even with a wood stove, its nice to have the heat pumps regulated fan blowing our warm living room air into other areas of the house a little more!

And my sewing loft, and especially my little sewing nook are so toasty warm now that I often have to wear short sleeve shirts even in the midst of winter, whereas in the rest of the house I am wearing a fleece coat!

Salem hit 8º and it was colder to me...both inside and out...then all of the years of being up in Alaska in the Juneau area and in my childhood home on Douglas Island. Maybe it was because I was so 'mind over matter' busy helping my mom and dad when they were both alive. Our kids in Eugene hit -10º, and our friends in Central Oregon went clear down to -27º. So, that news warmed us up in a hurry. You might feel sad or even 'frosty joy' where you live, but someone else might be sadder (more sad) or chillier still!

It's getting to feel a lot like Christmas at our house. I make most of my gifts for others, and besides, sewing upstairs was the only way (besides wearing a coat in the house!) to really keep warm. And so, I have been extra, extra busy sewing!

One of the saddest things that I discovered when both my father died in August of 2010 and now my mother passed away in 2013, is that almost no one sends paper sympathy cards anymore. In fact, with two exceptions...only two of my real live friends did after my mom's passing this September..

When my mom passed away, not one person sent flowers, brought over food, or came to visit.

8 long years of Alzheimer's Disease had taken its toll, not just on her, not just on us as her caregivers, but on any friends she might have even had left by the time she reached 88.

No one could cope with her changing so much, much less seeing her totally bedridden and unresponsive near the end.

 I literally drove around our tiny town, and stopped at one of her friends' house to tell them she had passed away. They changed the subject and even after an entire hour of visiting never once told me they were sorry for my loss!

I realized then, if I had never truly realized it before, how hard it is for some people to deal with loss and harder yet to deal with someone else's.

They are just plain too afraid of feeling the triggering of any pains of loss they might carry from their own lives. So, they wall their hearts up and try not to feel or to talk about it. 

After years of doing a volunteer lay therapy of hospice for those in intractable pain and/or dying, I learned to not be afraid, in any way, of the dying. And with my parents, and my mother in law, not to be afraid of being with them, or hold or kissing them even after they passed.

I still love them just as much, they just appear very, very different. But the love..it is just the same only yet deeper, still, because now...we finally truly realize what the loss of them means to us and to our lives without them.

It really hit me, just how much some expression of caring truly meant, and I vowed on both occasions that I would never not do something when I heard of someone I knew passing. And yes, it is often paperless, flowerless, food less (as in email or facebook) but I at least do something! I know I appreciated SO much when bloggers left comments here, or on facebook, when both of my parents passed. Those comment meant the world to me and I read them again, and again!!

So, a big chunk of my sewing is the making of either small format art quilts used as 'empathy cards' or small, easy to make 'prayer flags' that I give instead of cards. Above are two hanging prayer flags I made for friends, and I have made similar ones since, for other friends that will be given away soon.

I lost my best friend in a horrible, horrible car crash in 1997. She was just 46 and her daughter who also died, was only 12. The mother was my best friend since college in the late sixties. The daughter was my own youngest daughter's best friend since birth. They were on their way to the Jr. Olympics where our precious little 12 year old friend/third daughter, was to run in, and expected to win her division in Florida, that year. She was that amazing and that talented and that very, dear and special.

We built our houses next door to one another, and each of us raised 3 children, each and every single day for over 20 years..side by side.  I know loss of many kinds and they are all painful and all challenge us to the core.

But that death was the hardest of all, her husband and two surviving sons were in the car and witnessed the loss of their mother, their sweet and incredibly talented, young sister. I cried every single minute for the first 24 hours until I had no tears or heaving sobs left in my body.  And while the grieving lasted a very long time, as I sought to help the remaining family deal with theirs, in time it all eases, and all of the memories and all that you have learned from the experiences fill up the empty spaces, instead.

I learned so very much about loss, about grieving, and just plain about grief from that experience. I learned that it was only by believing that there was a purpose to this challenging journey and that by doing for others that I felt better. So, I helped that family every single day for an entire year. And I learned that by doing for others, my own losses, my own pains were made easier and more bearable. It was a different kind of mind over matter than I had been learning and practicing with years of meditation, many forms of yoga, ch'i gong, and other forms of transcendent mind, body, and spiritual practices, as well as my own form of spiritual practice with prayer.

And I learned about the making and sharing of prayer flags and the my own prayer filled small format art quilts.  Above, are the silk prayers flags that I dyed and printed and hung out on the little 'sweatheart' tree with its heart shaped leaves, that we planted between our two houses. 

When my brother was expected to die in early June of 2012 and I rushed to Anchorage to be with him and say goodbye and then he miraculously survived, I followed him through 3 states and 4 hospitals until he was restored to full health.


Again, my own form of mind over matter and putting love into action and not just reaction.  And when his wife became in desperate need of a kidney transplant (still does...Blood Type O+ with high antibody titers) I helped her. She moved south to be near her husband and together, we did everything we could for him. And still I found time to make each of them a little fabric art card/quilt and those little cards were in both of their hospitals room to room to room. When I couldn't be there with them, a part of me and my love for them was..it's that simple.


So, when my mother died, and suddenly, there were only a few family  phone calls, no visitors, and no cards, gifts, or food. So, we gave each other cards, made each other food (and yes, we were mostly all within two houses!) and gave lots and lots of love, and hugs.

And as soon as I could, when I was back in Oregon once again, I made the little fabric art card quilts shown above, and mailed them to my families in Douglas. I needed them to know that even while I was deeply grieving, myself, I knew that they were, as well.And each of them includes the Our Family/Prayer Poem that reminds us always of the importance of family and the cycles of birth and death within them..but in a good way!

Now, here in Oregon, it hits below freezing and I still needing to keep really, really busy. When I am busy, it takes away a little of the horrible stabbing heart chakra pain one feels after a deep and grieving loss. So, up into the sewing room and sew, sew, sew.

Or onto the computer and make and redo and update all of my kazillion free links and tutorials. It keeps me focused and gives me breaks from the pain..both emotional, and my own long term chronic pain issues that doctors once told me would put me into a wheelchair wihtin ten years. Well, it's been 33 years now, and I'm still going strong! So, much for their predictions and my own ability to use my own deep beliefs and my energetic mind over matter abilities as I do!

But it has been cold here and cold is cold!  I am suddenly wearing a coat in the house, two coats ..one on top of the other...when I go out to check out, feed, or continually replace frozen water with fresh for our chickens, wild birds, and any foraging feral cat, raccoon, deer opossum, or skunks!

Sew, up in the sewing room I have been!  And the warmth of the wood fire drifting upwards, the humming of my sewing machines...I was using three at once.....and the glow of the Christmas tree lights and garlands have only intensified rather than ruin my lovely Christmas cheer.

I always make a huge number of our Christmas gifts, but show them later rather than sooner due to wandering and wondering eyes that might here, appear!

But the ones that have been mailed and already opened, I can show. Or at least items that are very, very similar ;-)

So, here is another one of my teddy bear bags. This one for my dear sister-in-law, Shelley, who was recently diagnosed with end stage small cell carcinoma (lung cancer that has spread to her neck, liver, and other organs)

She had her first chemo treatment last month in Seattle, and the very next day, a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with a brother who lives near Seattle, then home to Juneau on Thanksgiving evening and another meal with her other brother in Juneau, and then another one of my brothers and his family in Douglas the next day on Friday. Thanksgiving is her very favorite holiday and she had 3 Thanksgivings in 2 days!

You tell me that was not meant to happen, they certainly did not plan it that way. But yes, Shelley got 3 Thanksgivings. Please do keep her in your thoughts and prayers. She just recently found out that she is to be a grandmother for the second time and would dearly love to live long enough to see the wee one be born.

Shelley loves teddy bears...I actually have three dear friends who love teddy bears. We all have an inner child that needs love and comforting and teddy bears certainly represent that to many, and they end being gifts for young and old alike, as well as being brought to hospitals. So, another teddy bear bag with teddy patch pockets inside on both sides, as well as outside.

 For Shelley, who loves teddy bears, one of my teddy bear bags to bring south once again on the 19th to have her second chemo. My little bear bag has three big inside pockets to keep her cell phone, or lists, or perhaps a trinket or two that comfort her during challenging times. My note card was filled with love and hugs and I told her to fill up the bag with lots of gifts from her to her beloved little granddaughter in Tennessee and the future little one in Washington state to bring with her when she visits them.

And for myself, this simple little garland of burlap and muslin...to remind me that there is always great joy, it's just up to us to bring it forth from within the cold and frosty energies into the warmth of the interior ones of the heart.

No matter what happens to us, to our earthly bodies, our love, our spirit, our soul lives on. Let it live within all of you know, and share that love with others while you still  can.





And yes, I've also been sewing for Christmas....lots and lots. But those must be shared on a much later day, once they are finally finished, wrapped and opened  ;-)






Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join her and make and donate quilts to charitable causes.   Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!