The lamb that said goodbye

Riverwitch #6

‘Riverwitch’ is a collaborative project with my wife Sharon Blackie, writing on her Substack  The Art of Enchantment. It’s the re-understanding of a prose duet we wrote for each other back in 2014, both grieving and celebrating our dislocation from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides to Donegal in north-west Ireland. It offers a story-within-a-story as, ten years on, we try to make sense of the ways in which places claim us, mark us – and then, when it’s time, cast us loose. We are taking  turns every Wednesday to revisit one of the original posts and add new reflections and insights.

The previous post in this series was Sharon’s ‘In the country of Riverwitch’, which she posted last week. Read it here. You can also find more of the background to this project here.

The lamb that said goodbye - March 2014

I am not one for extended goodbyes. Not someone who starts those long farewell ceremonies that begin with a visitor’s ‘well, I must be off now…’ and last for a further twenty minutes - eking out the long scraggy tail of the conversation, rummaging amongst the things not already said as if looking for a misplaced permission-slip to actually, physically go.

It isn’t that I don’t think goodbyes are important. I do. And I greatly admire the orchestration of a well-formed goodbye. One which separates like a gull taking off from a wavetop just before it breaks, one which soars away like the last note of a haunting melody. A proper goodbye has balance, it has content, it is a work of art in itself. It is not some attrition down to the bedrock of repetition, nor the asymptotic capture of absence. Well, not to me anyway. So I guess you could say that I’m something of a goodbye snob.

Our Hebridean ewe called Wonky. When she was a lamb we had to splint her broken leg with lollipop sticks.

Yet here I am, padding back and forth like a caged animal on this croft which is in the process of being sold. Neither here nor there. Wondering how I can possibly conjure up some appropriate goodbye to this generous, orderly barn which has sheltered me and my animals from the howling winds. How do I take my leave of that almost invisible hollow, halfway down the house field, where I found only by good luck the unsuspected second lamb of twins, born in a sleet-storm at two in the morning. The blister bulge of smooth rock out there on the headland where once a sea eagle stood. What do I say to that? It needs to be a masterpiece. Nothing else will do.

But I am starting at an acute disadvantage. You see, we did not put the ewes to the tup last December because we knew that we would have to be away just when young lambs would need our care. The ewes, little black Hebrideans, are going to a friend who has a small flock of the same breed in the north of the island. But we could not transport them late in pregnancy nor soon after birth. So I have no lambs of my own this spring. As far as the croft is concerned I am already some lingering irrelevance. Before I even start with ‘well, I must be off now…’

I am in the kitchen, mithering at the teapot, when the phone rings. I have a kind and wise old neighbour just up the road who has a flock of fine, tough Blackface. She is often alone when younger family members are away at work. This is a remote crofting community and the young men and women have always had to be away for paying work – the herring, the navy, the ship-building, the rigs. And so it came about that I was one last time in a bare-lightbulb shed in my waterproof over-trousers and my old jacket with makeshift toggles to close over the broken zip, looking at a ewe in bother. We put her down on her side on the concrete, my kind old neighbour and I, and spoke to her softly in Gaelic and then, just in case, in English. We told her it would be well. I have the soft, small  hands of a girl, we agreed, laughing, and so I would see to it.

The lamb’s head and one tiny pointed foot were out. But the other leg was back, which puts the shoulder all wrong and bulging just where it needs to be smooth and small. Judging by the drying wool, her head had been out some time and it was starting to swell with the pressure of blood. Had she not that one leg forward she would have been dead already. Somehow the position of the properly aligned leg allows just enough circulation and perhaps a shallow breathing. But she was very, very tired and her tongue lolled and the eyes were so sleepy and there was barely the spark to dream either of life or of death. I felt past the shoulder for the other leg. Sometimes, if the leg has started forwards and only the foreleg has gone back, you can crook a finger behind the knee and put things right in a moment. But I could feel nothing of the other leg. I pushed my hand further back and the ewe bickered her hard pain but still I could make no sense of it. Maybe then the thing to do is to push the lamb back in aways and get the legs together. But the lamb’s head had been out some time and the whole neck was out with it and it would have been like pushing on a rope. Besides, the engorged head is too big.

No time. The lamb stole some little breath and I put my foot on the ewe’s backside and took hold of the head and the tiny foot with a hand on each and pulled. She came past the awkward point and I let the ewe push her out. The lamb lay in a mess on the concrete, the misbehaving leg pressed firmly into the length of her body and still in the half-torn birth-sack. She only wanted to sleep but we would not let her. I harried her back into the world with a shake and a swing and a breath of my own – gently, very gently cupping my mouth over hers. She filled and gurgled. The ewe stood and looked. We all looked at each other and then we all looked at the lamb.

When the four legs eventually worked out to whom they belonged, and the swollen tongue retreated back to its cave and the head became less heavy with blood, the lamb finally stood. With one perfect little snicker of a cry, she sent me on my way. There was no need to conjure up my own goodbye after all. The lamb had said what was needed.

The lamb that said goodbye - October 2024

If there are any experienced shepherds reading this and if I did something wrong, there in my neighbour’s shed, please do not think too harshly of me. I served my lambing apprenticeship under a giant old crofter with hands like dinner plates. He guided my little hands with words and wisdom but I know that I cannot have understood everything. We cared deeply and did our best.

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I know that I have had an easy life. I should feel something akin to survivor’s guilt but I’m not sure how that would help anyone. Not that everything has invariably gone according to plan. Broadly speaking, though, the things I have really wanted have come within my reach in the long run. When goals have eluded me it has more often than not transpired that they weren’t what I truly needed after all.

As a consequence of my charmed existence I had to learn the art of goodbyes late in life. (Yes, Sharon, my fearsome love, you are right - there are always consequences.) That art of saying goodbye to something you love, which is a close cousin to the craft of dying. The craft of dying which is the inseparable twin brother of living well.

It is only now, perched high on the ledge of hindsight, that I can see how leaving Lewis in 2014 was actually my second lesson in goodbye. The first, a few years earlier, was dressed in such a strange uniform that I didn’t recognise what it was at the time.

I don’t know if it still happens this way, but in the old days a retiring RAF pilot would, after landing from their last flight, be greeted at the foot of the steps by the assembled members of the squadron and, for a senior pilot, the Station Commander might well make an appearance. There was champagne. I guess that doesn’t feature these days. Yes, it was a bit gauche. A bit Formula 1. But rituals and ceremonies are important in a service where people depend upon one another for their lives.

So it was for me on the 20th of March 2008. At a little after 1400hrs. My Officer Commanding and my Commanding Officer (ah, the military, they so love a riddle) were there with the rest of the aircrew and the station photographer for good measure. There were handshakes and smiles. There were knowing glances.

Photograph by Jamie Hunter, Aviacom

By and by, the raggle-taggle group had finished the required ritual and we began to walk back across the concrete towards the squadron buildings. The Station Commander and I, old friends, chatted about something or other. After we’d gone a short distance I stopped and padded my pockets, pretending to look for something. ‘Sorry, sir,’ I said, ‘I’ve left my map in the cockpit. I’ll just nip back and get it.’

As I got back to the aircraft the two groundcrew who were servicing it looked up. We knew one other well. We had been, over the years, ‘around the bazaars’ together. They smiled, saw that I was crying and found something to be busy with, over at the tool locker.

There is a surprisingly intimate place under the wing of a Tornado, just forward of the main undercarriage doors. The great bulk of the underwing drop tank creates a little private space as if you were tucked up under the aircraft’s armpit. You can shelter there from the rain or from the desert sun while you are waiting. The military life is a lot about waiting.

I stood in that little sanctuary for a moment, whispered what I had come back to whisper, kissed the skin of the fuselage and walked away. Into a new life.

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