Blondie died...

 I raised Blondie from a chick, and she was so sweet. She came when she was called and would love to be petted. When she got sick it felt stupid and unfair to be angry at a disease, but I was. We buried her in the forest, in a small clearing, and put rocks on the grave so raccoons and foxes wouldn’t dig her up.

What happened next is hard to explain. As we were leaving the clearing, my umbrella—open, held above me—was suddenly pushed from the top. I checked for wind, branches, animals, anyone nearby. Nothing. Then, while gathering rocks, the wind picked up in a very strange way: it felt focused at me, not at my mom who was kneeling beside the grave, not at the trees. Every time I tried to step away, it pushed me back—gentle but insistent. Once, I felt what I can only describe as several hands pressing me toward the hole. One pulled me sideways. It wasn’t violent, exactly, but it was distinct, coordinated, and only stopped when we left the edge of the woods.

Isis (one of the chickens) never left the coop that day. She kept Blondie company in the last hours, and I don’t know whether that matters. I don’t want to lean on spooky explanations—this isn’t a ghost story I want to sell—but I also can’t pretend it was nothing. There are ordinary possibilities: weird gusts, an overlooked branch, memory playing tricks during a tense moment. But I checked. I asked. None of the usual answers fit what I felt.

Grief doesn’t have a rulebook. Sometimes it’s loud; sometimes it arrives as an absence you notice only later. For me it also came with an odd physical insistence—like something pressing, not to harm, but to keep me there. I don’t know if that was the earth itself, my own mind trying to anchor me, or something else. I do know this: Blondie mattered. She deserved to be buried carefully, and she deserved a goodbye that wasn’t rushed.

So I’m writing this as a small record: Blondie was real. Isis kept her company. The clearing is where we laid her to rest, and for reasons I can’t fully name, I felt held there. If you’ve ever lost something that mattered and then had the world behave like it wanted to keep you from leaving—take that seriously, even if you can’t explain it. Grief and the strange often sit next to each other.

Here's a random picture, because I figured we all need it:

Now when you're feeling sad too, you can look at this picture and be happy again.