Photographers sometimes hide behind their cameras – I always loved the detachment of the journalist – but yesterday, when Maria’s sheep Tess fell gravely ill and death seemed to loom – I made a conscious decision to separate myself from it, Maria and the vet, Dr. Lauren Marsh were working closely and comfortably with Tess, there was no room for me, no real role to pay except supporting Maria in her decisions, which I did. Beyond that, I decide to accept the challenge of photographing death and along with that, of trying to learn about the spirituality of animals, and there is nothing more spiritual than death, as I have learned in my hospice work.

Death is usually hidden from the world, it is a taboo in our culture, our heresy, our political and medical worlds promote the idea of eternal life and the miracles of technology, a farm shatters those conceits quickly. Animals do not live in a no-kill world, that is a human need and ideal. But I have seen much of their spirituality, and I saw more of it yesterday. From the minute we began working on Tess, Red never took his eyes off of her. Neither did the three donkeys, who stayed in the barn just a few feet from us and watched and listened to everything we did. The sheep watched from a distance, they stayed away.

I saw that we are a spiritual community here at Bedlam Farm, the animals with their keen senses and instincts, have embraced this sense of the place, they clearly wanted to observe the process, to see and hear all of it, they never stopped watching. Maria and I felt their presence, we took comfort from them, I can’t say if they were offering support of comfort, but we felt comfort, they stood by to be touched, leaned against, I felt something almost tangible coming from them. We do so much emotionalizing of animals that it is becoming difficult to separate what they do from what we need them to do and want them to do.

When Tess died yesterday, there was a release in the room, an almost tangible feeling of a spirit leaving. I saw it in Red’s eyes, I saw it in the donkey’s rigid and rapt stance. When Tess was gone, Red sniffed her and abandoned her to purse the other sheep, the donkeys came and sniffed her and also went away, the other sheep  paid no attention to her. I saw no grieving, only deep acceptance and an almost mystical sense of a community. I felt the animals saw Tess’s spirit leave her body, and they were done. Red’s eyes were different than I had ever seen them – I got a photo of his face.

The animals stood close by us all day, Red was exceptionally calm and the donkey’s walked with us to the outer pasture, stood close to us.

It seemed to me the animals were seeing Tess off, acknowledging her spirit’s departure, they did not grieve in the human sense but they did pay a kind of tribute to her I felt, engage in their own kind of prayers. It also seemed as if the animals were supporting us, standing by us, participating in this kind of circle, this kind of community.

I saw that we were not just animals and their owners, but a community of spirit beings, some human, some animal, we came together for the sickness and death of one of us, and then moved forward with our lives. I felt the spirituality of these animals, their connection to us, their intuitiveness, their healing power.

I am glad I focused on this yesterday, I felt as if I walked through a portal to another world, and then came to see that was not another world, but my world, and it touched me deeply and moved me profoundly. We are a spiritual community at Bedlam Farm, all of us, and that was something to cry about.