thank you laura for doing bedtime tonight (and tomorrow) for me.
Carol · Aug. 19, 2010
i was thinking about percy's perfect, happy family on the way home tonight....they all are so happy and sweet.
you would think it would give me a great deal of pleasure to think about how happy they are in their life. but it doesn't..i started to think about joy's friend that i had left behind and started feeling upset again.
more than a year later and it still bugs me that i left her behind. mentally i know all of the reasons why we just cannot support 4 full grown cows on our land...but we would have been supporting four somehow if todd had lived so that argument with myself doesn't do much good. i just cannot seem to get her out of my head...how come i let joy get so lucky but wouldn't do the same for her friend?
now there were many cows there that day that i did not choose to help...but it is just that one cow who is really haunting me so badly so i know that i chose totally wrong...i could have made it work with just one more...i should have found a way to make it work and that cow should be here alive, well and happy too, today.
and this is the problem with true great regrets...they never, ever, really go away.
i remember 30 years ago my sister gave me some advice..i was at an art show with her and there was this little hand made clay dragon that i really wanted to buy...it cost something like $50 which back then was a lot of money for a small pottery thing..and i was fussing cuz i really wanted it but couldn't really justify spending the money.
she said..if you really truly want something, and you have the means to buy it..think about this....will you always wish you had bought it because if you would then you should. or would you soon have forgotten about it cuz you really did not want it that badly, in which case you should leave it here and just walk away.
i decided i did really want it...so i did buy it and i never once regretted it either....i really loved that little dragon..it made me happy just looking at it.
of course, 30 years later i don't have it now...i think one of the kids broke it one times to many and it could not be glued together any more. but i did have it for a very long time and i can still see and feel it in my minds eye so i guess that makes it still special to me.
i should have thought about this with joy's friend...would i forever regret the decision not to save her?...apparently i will...and that sucks.
whereas I would have been in a heaving, gelatinous heap of tears off to the side somewhere throwing up and whereas I am beyond impressed that you have the internal fortitude which enabled you to even GO there, the one for whom I have cried from afar (having never laid eyes on her) is the cow who put her head through the fence to lick Emily.