My Diamond

It has been a long time since I wrote anything here (at least it was, when I originally wrote this).  My faith-filled blogs gave way to this one, where darkness and despair seem to be the main theme.  Things have continued to be difficult and life relentlessly punishing.  As things progress, disaster after disaster, heartbreak after devastation, I find myself scratching my head in bewilderment and wondering, WHY?

And throughout, when I look outside my window, where lush colourful nature all around me speaks of beauty and life and joy, I am deeply puzzled, unable to marry the two realities I find myself in.

In hindsight, life has been cruel from the day we arrived here, when the removalists destroyed everything we owned.  Much happened since; Natural disasters and human corruption laced our paradise, but for the first few years we justified those away, filled with enthusiasm and joy of our new found path.

The fires of 2019 were tough, and the immediate flooding, black outs, and imminent neighbourly aggression that soon followed were the beginning of a breaking point.  To be faced with the harsh evidence of blatant human dishonesty, on such a widespread scale, was horrifying even for me, who has so little faith in human nature.  There is no point in detailing these events here, suffice it to say that months of battles, lawyers, threats, and subsequent financial erosion, took their toll.
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But somehow, after coming back from an emotional brink, I began to heal despite the ongoing difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves.  (Maybe it was the shock of the events that started to fade, I don’t know).  After a while I wondered how come I was able to deal with these hits relatively well.  I concluded that to have my girls in my life, a part of my life I consciously kept positive, always, a refuge of love, connectivity, and life, had given me the strength to deal with the rest of it.

And then life struck.  My girls the next target of life’s cruel ways.  Overwhelmed by parasites and predators from every direction, one of the brightest lights in my life was all but extinguished.  Darkness and a chill of horror entered deep into my being.  A chill I had never experienced before.

Many months of battles, and I am still battling.  Another challenge to add to a very long list I have not detailed here (there is no point), that may very well defeat me.  This is the one that got me straight in my heart.  This is the one that saw me finally lose faith in all that I ever connected with, nature and creation as a whole.  Life’s universal energy flow, the cosmic smile, creation’s love -the gods had betrayed me.
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Ironically, the more difficult things became in the past couple of years, the more I have discovered the strength of the love inside of me, and in the spirit of human nature.  Who would have thought?  Even our neighbour I now see as a fearful child, capable of love like us all, when fear doesn’t overwhelm us.  So many people have been through unimaginable horrors, and I think I now have glimpsed this human love they witness to, that has carried them through the darkest of times.  (Just a glimpse…) It’s a real thing, but in this world of puzzling contradictions I remain broken and without faith.
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The other day, when I was running around like a headless chook, trying to cater to my boys, my girls, my dogs; deal with the mouse jumping around in the sink (in parallel with the rodent plague infesting NSW’S west, we have a rodent infestation of our own…), and every other demand under the sun, trying to get too many things done in too short a time as usual; I looked down at my hand and saw my diamond ring stare back at me lifelessly, my diamond was gone.

I am not a jewellery person.  I only wear my wedding ring and this one, an unintentional set, one from my mum’s family, the other from my husband.  When I put them both on, they fit perfectly, meant to find each other.  When the diamond vanished, I felt as if a connection was severed between the two worlds, and a link between my mother, her family, and I, was taken.  It broke my heart.

I am not talking about the kind of devastation I have been describing previously.  But this got me where it hurts, and the gods seemed cruel to me, yet again.  Nothing more than an afternoon stint for them, but enough to remind me this wave of punishment is still flowing strong.

I did not have too much time to ponder over this, daylight was fading and we needed to tend to the animals.  ‘Mum, there’s a mouse in the sink’, my youngest called out to me.  ‘Yes, I know, I will deal with it in a minute’, I answered in agitation.

As I grabbed it in a container, ready to put in in the freezer (don’t go there, each to his own way of killing and I hate it either way), I felt like a hypocrite.  I will not be one of those people who cry bitterly over a stone, while taking a life without a second thought.  I sent Daniel out to start taking the chickens in, while I drove up the paddock to the farthest part of my property, hoping this mouse will head in a different direction, and sped back to get on with work.

Once night time came and the madness subsided, the deep sadness of my loss came back.  Hours went by, followed by days.  Whenever I touched my finger habitually, I was reminded that my diamond was gone.  I also thought about the mouse. 
I looked up to invisible gods: ‘Really, guys?  You had to take my diamond for that?  You couldn’t think of an easier way to save this mouse?’  Let’s face it, all it had to do was look in my eyes, it’s little squeak when I accidently pinched its tail with the box lid, and I would have let it go’.  Not good enough!

And of course, bargaining: ‘I would give 100 diamonds to save my girls without thinking twice!’  But I don’t have 100 diamonds, and I don’t know how to save them.

Every time I felt my finger, I saw myself turn my back to the gods in my pain.  Like Cricket did to us, feeling betrayed by what we had done to her. 
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I think of Cricket often.  She had a light, clear spirit that took over a room.

Cricket was the first, and to date, the only girl I lost to this parasitic pandemic we are having.  She got sick and thin early, long before I realised I had a widespread problem.  It was last Autumn, and the nights were cold.  So we treated her and took her inside.  She stayed in a little cage in the loungeroom and kept me company in the evenings.  When she started gaining weight, we let her out during the day to be with her flock, and back in at night.  She used to chat to us, and her company was wonderful.  The boys used to feed her crickets that escaped from Ashley’s tank (our bearded dragon), and so she was renamed.

Eventually she joined her flock.  But she began to deteriorate again.  We treated her with another medicine.  Two day in the water.  She hated it, and lost faith in us. She would turn her back to me quietly when I walked into the room.  I was so sad. 
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Eventually she joined her flock again, improved, but went downhill for the last time, and was gone.  She died with us holding her, and I miss her and her incredible spirit.  I feel privileged to have had her in my life.
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Every time I found myself touching my finger, I was reminded my diamond was gone, and could not see a positive angle to this story.  I did not want to.  I turned my bruised body around, my back to the gods, cricket in my mind’s eye, (with a silent apology and hug to a beautiful girl).

And so another day or two went by.  My eldest, Adam, looked for the diamond in the backyard, where I was brushing Leo, but of course, it was futile.

Later that week I was filling up some buckets of water to take to the new paddock, now home to our chickens and other animals.  We are having problems with our water tank, so a ‘Little House in the Prairie’ reality prevails, and not in a good way…  I usually leave the buckets out for a couple of days to dry out, then shake out the leaves and bits that have fallen in and take them inside to fill up.  Being usually on auto mode, I don’t remember what I did with these ones, but after I filled up both buckets, ready to take them out to the paddock, I noticed something sparkling within.  Looking closer in the dim kitchen light, there was definitely something small and shiny at the bottom of the bucket. 
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‘Surely not! No way!’  I thought to myself.  But sure enough, at the bottom of a full bucket of water, there it was, my diamond.  And beside it a little sliver of gold, -the claw in the ring’s setting that had broken off.  I couldn’t believe it!  Stunned by this surreal and unexpected turnaround, I left it in the water to show the family when they got back home.  I spent the next couple of days elated, and bewildered.  Weeks later, I still don’t understand.  Did my cold shoulder make you give it back?  Or is this your way of making sure I am paying attention, listening, when you tell me that no matter how painful life has become, you are here with me, that I am not alone?

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