Neighbor/duck/memories

I confused people on Facebook. Let's see if I can be clearer here. Back in March, I shared a post. Apparently it was a poem? I just noticed text that stuck a chord with me and the picture. (People thought it was a poem I wrote. No, I clicked "Share" on someone else's post.) I don't know the author at all.

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At that time, I shared her post with these words of my own:

I will share this morning’s silliness, but the serious thoughts here are the real thing and what I think, too. (Although, I won’t bother to dye these new grey hairs.) I told my family the picture was actually me and our duck this morning. At 6:30 a neighbor babushka called me to say that our duck was on her roof. I woke Asya and we went running over there. Babushka’s son is a child in an adult body because of disability, and he was very excited to see us! And the duck! Once I caught Bella, I realized that I couldn’t crawl back through the fence holding her, so Asya went back to get the keys to our gate, while the son let me out of their yard. Bella and I looked exactly like this picture while we waited in the street, except that I was wearing pajamas and forgot to put a wreath on my head.

 

And then jump ahead to now: on Thursday I was looking for a photo of our late elderly duck, and my search on Facebook brought up that post because of the word "duck" in it. It was very poignant to reread and remember, because we had just learned that our neighbor's son--the one I wrote about there--died from his long-term ailments. His death wasn't directly related to war violence (except for maybe all the fear and stress?), but in peace time he could have been treated at a hospital and lived longer. That morning when he found our duck on their roof was so funny; he was just so excited. Now I'll treasure that memory of him outside, trying to get video of the "rare bird," and going on and on about it. We'll miss him.