I know better than to get attached to baby birds or chickens. A Robin laid four eggs and hatched, and I went to see them every day.

I was warned that Robins usually abandon their babies after two or three days, and she did exactly that.

The mother was comfortable with me as long as I didn’t get too close or stay too long, which I was careful not to do. Watching her and her mate bring food to those open beaks was touching.

Yesterday, when I came out to check on them, they weren’t moving and I saw her out in the pasture, collecting hay for another next. Robins do that; very few of their offspring last more than a month or so.

This didn’t even get a week. I often say that the farm is a teacher, and what it teaches, among other things, is how to get comfortable with life and death.

Still, I felt sad about losing these four; I let my guard down, thinking some of them might make it. I didn’t give them names, blessedly.

The barn sparrows are much more committed mothers; they hover for days, even weeks, and make sure their offspring can fly before they vanish.

I decided the newborn birds deserved some dignified farewell, so I went out to the next, confirmed they were dead, and put the bodies in the pasture.

I wished them Godspeed, which is what I want for all animals on the farm when they die.

The mother was just a few feet from me collecting wood and straw for another next -I’m pretty sure it was her. ‘What the hell?” I asked as if there could be a reply.

I said a few words, and I returned the next to its original position. It’s a beautiful next, well placed and put together, and entirely secure. I’m inching closer to death myself, but I don’t feel morbid.

Google says very few Robin hatchlings live long, the Mother is always rushing off to build a new nest and brood again, and the Father goes along.

Sometimes nature makes no sense to me – why lay eggs if the mother won’t stick around to feed her children? – but it is a much more powerful and glorious thing than I can question.

I have to accept many things in life, whether I understand them or not. We’ve seen an awful lot of death on the farm since we’ve been here, and I am quite used to it. Sometimes it does get to me. They looked so innocent and eager in there and their bodies were full and beautiful when I took them out of the next, cold and still.

When the time comes for me, the farm will have helped me be ready.

Perhaps some other bird will take advantage of the next. Life goes on. And on. I see it as a wheel that is constantly turning.

Death is an equal life partner; it is one of the very few things that will happen to us without fail; it is the great equalizer. Mother Nature is so much bigger than me.