Good Grief – A Tribute to Bella

Those words find us now as we sit with our good grief for dearest Bella. Bella found sanctuary in our hearts and a place here in August 2023. Carrying more than her young and fragile body ever should have, she was critically thin, dehydrated and exhausted after a difficult birth. Lambing paralysis stole the use of her back legs while a predator stole her newborn lamb.

Yet none of it stole her spirit.

Bella did not surrender to what happened to her. And coming to know her as we did, that is no surprise. At first, she met our attempts to help with a fierce headbutt that seemed to say, “I’m still here.”

And she gloriously was.

There were slings and IV fluids, hand-picked grass and endless encouragement. There were falls and setbacks and more hurdles than one sheep should ever have to face. She trialled a cart, but in true Bella fashion, she refused to be defined by it.

And it became clear that Bella would live life on her terms, even in a compromised body.

Her name means beautiful and that she was. You saw it in the glow of her eyes, in her determined honk that echoed across the paddock and in the way she insisted we meet her on her terms.

And there was her muzzle, greying before its time, betraying her youth but never her wisdom.

Time and her body were not kind and complications from repeated prolapses demanded more of her than even her indomitable spirit could overcome. And though it broke our hearts, we honoured the independence we so admired in her the only way we could—by setting her free.

That is our good grief.

It is the kind of grief that hurts because our love for Bella was real, the kind that breaks the heart so the spirit can stay open.

Dearest, most precious Bella, your body may have faltered, but your spirit never did.

And now, you are free.