A Different Kind of Bucket List
On graves, gratitude, and how to fill the time we’re given
Welcome to Natalie’s Field Notes. Put on your sunhat, grab a handkerchief, and spend a few minutes in the pasture with me.
🐑 Four Mourners and A Funeral
After looking at my most recent text message, I spoke to my friend, “Would you like to go to a sheep’s funeral?” We had just finished a picnic under my trees. He nodded and shrugged as if to say, “Why not?”
The old ewe had died the night before. My neighbor and I had texted that morning, brainstorming how to deal with the remains.
My friend and I walked up the road, down the gravel driveway, and through the gate to my neighbor’s middle pasture. The man who helps on my and my neighbor’s farm met us there and led the way. The remaining seven sheep nervously watched us. “They’re spooked,” he said.
Burs in the dried grass poked through my socks, itching at my skin.
As we turned around the eastern side of the long barn, I saw my neighbor waiting in the south pasture. The tractor stood nearby. A deep hole had been scraped into the ground and a pile of dirt lay behind it.
The wind blew toward us as we crossed the front of the open grave. The corpse had begun to bloat and gave off a smell. Flies hovered around the body.
We, the four mourners, gathered on the side where the wind took away the smell. We stood quietly around the hole on that hot and dusty day surrounded by the dry earth, yellowed ankle-high grass, and blue sky.
They had prepared the grave with green things, in the otherwise brown landscape. The ewe lay on a bed of mulberry and blackberry leaves. They had covered her with grape vines, rosemary, mint, poppies, grass, roses, and nasturtium flowers.
My neighbor explained that the ewe had been slow in the last months, and said a few simple words thanking the ewe. Then, she turned, looked at me and asked if I wanted to say something.
I hadn’t planned to speak at a sheep’s funeral that day. I also hadn’t felt emotional, but as soon as I spoke, I began to cry.
“Thank you for your companionship. I watched you and your flock every day during my illness, when I struggled so much with anxiety. I worried about you. Thank you for helping me learn to be more at peace with uncertainty.”
The short moment was over. My friend and I walked away as my neighbor made preparations to move the dirt over the ewe’s body with the tractor.
As we crossed the inner field, my friend found a tuft of dark wool on the ground. He rolled it and put it in his shirt pocket with his right hand. As we continued home I said, “Now you can say you’ve attended a sheep’s funeral.”
He replied with a smile, “Bucket List.”
📓 Field Notes — Using Death to Decide How to Direct Our Lives
This sheep’s funeral, and the hours surrounding it, will likely someday be a longer essay. It was a uniquely touching afternoon. I wanted to tell a short version now because I just turned 50. You might wonder why my birthday inspired me to talk about a funeral.
When I designed my website last year, I joked that I wanted the top header to say “We’re all going to die.” I did not. But the subtext of the words “Balance. Healing. Wholeness.” is still that original message.
Thinking about our own deaths, or the death of animals, people, or even the end of things we cherish and love is one of the most difficult things we have to face. It’s so difficult in fact, that we often spend a great deal of time trying to ignore this reality.
One of the main lessons of my recovery journey is the simple and transformative power of learning to sit with what is painful, uncomfortable, and unwanted. When we welcome these things in, like in Rumi’s poem “The Guest House,” we allow them to be transformed into something new.
(Watch: the sheep visiting me in February 2024 — companions in my final stretch of recovery.)
Lessons From A Sheep’s Burial
Attending that sheep’s funeral, I was presented with the ugliest of death — the smells, the flies, the reality of looking directly at what had been moving and alive the day before, that was now inert and without breath. Even as a person of faith, facing death and working toward acceptance of it is an ongoing journey for me. Yet, I know facing it can unlock something special.
As I came out of my illness—its own type of death—I emerged even more clearly aware that I have one life. It made me more present to the fact that how I spend my time — what I give my attention to — makes up my limited life. This embodied awareness became a strong motivational tool to change health habits, to work on forgiveness, and to do the sometimes boring and persistent work to retrain my thinking patterns. It helped me change myself.
I cried during that sheep’s funeral. I cried at the knowledge that the sheep no longer lived. I cried for the suffering and difficulty I went through in my illness. I cried over what anxiety and fear had robbed me of in my life. And, in that grief, I also felt the pull to live my life more authentically and richly.
Sharing From Your Bucket of Life
In the later stages of my recovery I did work to rebuild who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live on the other side of my illness. One of the books I used was What Color is Your Parachute?
In a back chapter of the 2022 edition, the author Richard Nelson Bolles shares his perspective as an Episcopal priest about creating a life mission. His essay boils down to a question that has stuck with me: What do you want there to be more of in the world because you once lived?
It’s a powerful question. It doesn’t require that you be a person of status. It doesn’t talk about grand achievements. It isn’t about creating Bucket Lists. Instead, it asks: What is it that you want to contribute with your energy, using the life force moving through your nervous system, with whatever time you are given?
The short version of my current mission is to bring more wholeness to the world. My values, which I shared about earlier this year, help me most moment-to-moment, when I’m having an emotional reaction, and I want to skillfully choose my response. My mission, on the other hand, has helped me choose how I direct my energy and attention.
Having turned half a century old, I celebrate many wonderful memories. I acknowledge the sorrows and struggles too. Someday like that sheep, I also will be buried under dust and dried grass. Until then, I attempt to live out, as Mary Oliver said, my “one wild and precious life” directed toward what brings meaning to me.
🌱 Planting Instructions
Spend some time journaling or sharing with a friend — Have you ever attended a funeral which impacted how you wanted to live your life? See if you can answer the question: What do I want there to be more of in the world because I once lived?
🌞 Farmer’s Almanac
My book, Enough Feathers to Fly, is in the final proofreading stage, and is on schedule to be launched in August 2026. In just a few weeks, you’ll be able to read how these sheep were involved in my work of reducing anxiety and coming to accept and love myself and the uncertain world more fully. I can’t wait to share the stories with you.
If you found this newsletter useful, send me an email sharing something you want to fill your life with and what you plan to share from your bucket.
Wishing you Peace and Goodness,
Natalie 🐦⬛
Lovely . I am rooting for you to have a successful book launch! Debra Palmer