Riding my motorbike to work this morning brought me up alongside a sad scene.
On the main road, right in front of the hospital, a kangaroo lay across the median strip.
At first I though he was dead. Hit by some car in the dawn gloom.
But as I pulled alongside, he lifted his head and looked up at me forlornly.
I pulled over, dismounted and walked back to see if there was anything to be done.
He didn’t look that old. His breath was steaming in rapid short puffs. He lay amongst a scattering of headlight diamonds. His legs were broken and twisted back on themselves. Bright blood bubbled at his mouth.
Every now and again he would try to get up, stumbling over his fractured legs and flopping over to one side.
Kangaroos are not capable of expression, but never the less, he looked frightened and in pain and strangely confused as to why he could not get up.
He was suffering, and obviously beyond any salvation.
I have been privileged the intimacy of being with the dying on many occasions. But the glimpse of this kind of wild death was, to me, awkward and unsettling.
Looking around, I sought for something blunt and heavy that I could use to quickly….and I could use words like dispatch or end his suffering, or euthanise, but the only word thumping against my chest was… kill him.
I was thankful that there was nothing to be found. For I was afraid that if there was, I would have failed the task.
So instead, I called for a ranger to come and assist.
He would be a while.
I moved in close as I dare, knelt down, not wanting to have him spook and stumble out into the road.
And I waited with the young roo that lay dying in front of a hospital.
It was nothing. It was something.
I was once on call for work and drove in past a cat lying in the road, in the rain. On my way back home, about 30 min later, she lifted her head as I went by. Of course I had to turn around. Brought her home and laid her on my bed while we waited for a vet office to open. Her back legs were paralyzed, she was cold as ice, but she would pull herself out from under whenever I tried to cover her for warmth. As I spoke to her gently, she pulled herself towards me and licked my hand. What a sweetie. About 6am I left to put notices in the mailboxes close to where I found her, and when I came back an hour later she had died. I feel so lucky, to have met her, and to have been able to get her out of the road, and the rain, for her last night.
I was very definitely something. Bless you.
How helpless we feel when we don’t have access to the tool kit we usually reach for to provide comfort to the dying, whether those tools be medications, language or touch
I typed out a long post about one of my memories of growing up on a farm, but I’ve decided against posting it. What’s the old adage..? There are two things where you don’t want to know how
they’re made: laws and sausages.
So instead I will just say: death is a part of life. Few know that better than farmers and HCWs. Learning about death early, and learning to respect the dying are two things I really appreciate learning about growing up on a property. Often that’s all you can do, show some respect.