For the raccoon that I could not carry. For the lives we cannot save or reach in time.
The road was humming with cars, headlights, and the hurried rhythm of another workday. It was early morning. But everything in me stopped when I saw the body of a raccoon in the middle of the road. The body was newly fallen, and the being was freshly gone. I knew it had not been there the night before.
I kept driving.
I assessed the road and the traffic. I thought about turning back. I thought about stopping.
But I didn’t.
And I’ve been carrying this ever since.
The ache is still present in the depths of my heart. The pain of the unbearable moments when we cannot act, or do not act, even when love is present. These are the moments when our body can’t hold what our heart wants to carry. When we can not overcome the demands to keep moving, to stay on schedule, to pretend we didn’t just witness a sacred life torn from its journey.
Sometimes I think the greatest pain isn’t only loss, but the silence that surrounds it. The way some lives are stepped over. Forgotten. Unnamed. How we’re expected to tuck our grief away and keep surviving the day.
But tonight, I want to say:
You were not forgotten.
You mattered.
To me.
To this Earth.
To the starlight and the soil that will hold you now.
This message is for all the unseen beings, feathered, furred, wild, weathered, nameless. This whisper is for you:
You are loved.
You are remembered.
You did not pass unnoticed.
You were life, and you were beauty, and you are not alone.
If you’re reading this with a broken heart, holding your own story of the one you couldn’t reach, I’m with you. I know that quiet heartbreak. I know what it’s like to keep showing up while something inside you is still weeping. Let this be your permission to grieve in your own time, in your own way.
May your sorrow be a form of love.
May your witnessing be an offering.
And may you always remember:
You do not need to fix the whole world to honor a single life.