I’ve had it up to here with bears this year. I was mid-sentence on a Zoom call with a client when I heard a pitch of panic I’d never heard from my ducks before. And all three at once.

I was facing a semi-open glass slider, so I stood up ( still talking, I think) and saw a bear running after my ducks.

Bless my client, who heard my voice change and responded perfectly, because I was out the door mid-conversation, taking my deck stairs two at a time, sprinting across the yard, yelling and waving my arms like a woman who has entirely lost her dignity, and does not care. The bear took one look at me and reconsidered their life as I chased them clean off the property.

(A small aside, because I can’t not tell you. A few minutes later, still shaking, I was standing under a big fir catching my breath, and heard a sound above me of a second bear, who came shimmying down the trunk, right in front of my face, took one look at me, and bolted. Apparently my reputation now precedes me. I’ve become a known problem in the local bear community, which is fine by me.)

But here’s where the real story is. And it isn’t the bear.

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When the bear chased the ducks, they scattered. Runner ducks can’t fly, so when they’re terrified, they just run, apparently in three different directions.  And they hide wherever they can. I found two of them fairly quickly, both trembling, then refusing to leave my side.

But I didn’t find the third, Blue.

I called her. I walked every inch of the property. I checked the places she likes and the places she’d never go. And I held some very big emotions in my chest as I kept walking and calling. But there was nothing. No sound, and no Blue.

This is the part of loving something that doesn’t make it into the story. It’s not the heroic dash across the yard. That part’s easy, actually. It’s all adrenaline and instinct. I mean the after. The long, unglamorous searching and calling out into silence. The sitting in the grass with the two who came back, stroking their feathers, and not knowing.

There’s no rush of bravery in that part. It’s just the slow, aching work of staying present with something you can’t fix and can’t rush and can’t control.

That’s most of love, if you think about it. It’s not the rescue, but the tending.

________

So, after more than two hours, I did the thing I know how to do, because life has taught me how.

I mourned her.

I told myself the truth. That she’d had two wonderful years. That this is the circle of life, and a bear is just being a bear and a duck is just being a duck, and there was nothing more I could have done. I felt the grief move through me, and I let it. I didn’t rush it or argue with it, but let myself begin to accept that Blue was gone.

That surrender was real. It wasn’t giving up. It was the hard, grown-up work of releasing something I loved into a reality I couldn’t change. I’ve had to do that before, in far bigger ways than a duck. I know the shape of that particular letting-go in my body. So I wasn’t performing acceptance. I meant it. She was gone, and I was learning to carry it.

And then Blake came through the blackberries

I’d asked him to text the neighbours about the bears and check if they’d seen any evidence, a pile of feathers or something, just in case.

Unbeknownst to me, the neighbour texted back that he hadn’t seen any bears, but he had seen a duck, seemingly lost, wandering, and confused, out on his ten-acre property, a good distance from home.

So Blake went to get her. He pushed through the brush and the trees and the wild blackberry canes, and he found her, and he picked her up, and he carried her home in his arms.

And the moment Blue saw me, she launched herself out of his arms and came running across the grass, quacking the entire way, not at all traumatized, instead telling me all about her grand adventure, I’m sure, every harrowing chapter of it. The other two ducks heard her and came barrelling over. And the whole day just… broke open.

The release was visceral. I felt it in my whole body. The grief I’d been carrying for those two hours met the impossible sight of her running toward me, alive.

_______

Sometimes the story rewrites itself, but not usually. I know that better than most. Some things we lose, we don’t get back, and no amount of searching or calling or hoping brings them running across the grass. I would never stand here and tell you otherwise.

But sometimes the ending you’ve braced for isn’t the ending you get. Sometimes you do the whole grief, surrender all the way down and through, make your peace with the loss… and then love comes walking through the blackberries, carried in someone’s arms.

And when it does, you don’t get to keep it by having refused to grieve. The grief was still right, and the surrender was still real. You needed to do it, not knowing. Which isn’t wasted love, but just what it costs to care about anything you can’t control.

All this to tell you that this week is a tender, quiet, in-between kind of week. The big dramatic moment has passed, and now there’s the softer work. Think of it as the tending, settling, and small acts of care that are how we actually love the things and beings in our lives. It’s not the sprint at the bear. It’s the two hours in the grass, and the push through the brush to carry someone home.

So if you’re in the after of something this week, whether that’s the quiet part, the tending part, or the part nobody claps for, I want you to know it counts. It might be the truest love you offer all year.

And if you’ve been bracing for an ending, stay open, just a crack. Do your grieving honestly, yes. But leave the smallest window for the possibility that someone might yet come through the blackberries.

Jonni

P.S. Blue, of course, is completely fine. Unbothered, even. And demanding attention. It’s the other two who can’t shake it. They won’t venture out now unless I’m right there beside them, every step. Which means I’m spending my days slowly walking anxious ducks around the gardens like a very patient security detail. Fitting, for a week about tending. It’s rarely the one who had the adventure who needs the aftercare.

P.P.S. If you’re in the tender after of something, whether that’s the quiet part, or the searching part, or the part that doesn’t resolve neatly, that’s exactly the kind of thing I sit with people in inside Both/And. It includes a call to talk it through, and me in your inbox for the two-hours-in-the-grass moments in between. Find all the details here.