I don’t know if there is a heaven, or if I’ll be invited in, but if there is a heaven and St. Peter is running it, I’ll ask him if I can be reincarnated as one of Maria’s animals or plants.
I can’t imagine a better life for any living thing. At 3 p.m. today, Maria and I went outside with a dog food bowl filled with pineapple. The pineapple was spoiled and unedible for us, but Maria knew the chickens and the sheep would love it.
So she cut it up carefully into scores of pieces, and we went out for the afternoon feeding. The animals are onto Maria by now, and when she shows up at the back door with a bowl, they come rushing to the fence.
She goes first to the roost and gives the chickens a few pieces and then to the fence and moves up and down until each donkey and all of the sheep get a piece or two.
She takes extra special care to make sure each lamb gets a piece as well. Every morning she checks on each one of the 100 or so plants that live inside in the winter. Everyone is doing well.
The photo is of Asher climbing halfway up the fence to get his pineapple.
I want to come back as one of them.
I have a feeling she’ll have a lineup of reincarnated animals to care for! Such a naturally caring human being draws living beings to her without effort. A rare but beautiful occurrence. My mother was like that. I miss her, and yet I feel her with and within me.