The Day I Saved Three Baby Goats and Finally Understood My Mother’s Last Words
I never meant to stop at the roadside auction.
I was driving home from my mom’s house, her sweaters in a box beside me, trying not to fall apart, when I saw the sign: FARM SALE – TODAY ONLY.
Something made me brake.
I wasn’t there to buy anything.
Then I saw them — three baby goats, pressed together in a corner. Too small. Too young. The man called them “unsold leftovers.” Said they were headed for feed.
Leftovers.
The night before my mom died, she’d whispered through her oxygen mask, “Don’t leave the soft things behind.”
I thought she meant keepsakes.
But standing there, looking at those trembling bodies, I heard her clearly.
So I scooped them up. “I’ll take them.”
No farm. No clue. Just grief and a backseat full of blankets.
I wrapped them in Mom’s sweaters and drove home. Daisy. Violet. Clover.
The nights were chaos — bottles, crying, messes. Mine and theirs. But somewhere between the feedings and the tiny hooves on my kitchen floor, something loosened inside me.
Peace, maybe.
Grief doesn’t just live in what we lose.
Sometimes it arrives small and shaking, asking to be carried.
I didn’t leave the soft things behind.
I brought them home.
And saving them might have saved me too.
