22/10/2026
Never Enough 🐑💔
There are some goodbyes for which the heart can never be prepared. And some lives so heartbreakingly brief that, no matter how much love we pour into them, we are left with the same aching thought.
It was never enough.
Never enough time. Never enough tomorrows. And never enough tears to express the depth of a love that had barely begun to unfold.
This morning, our darling Mary Pop-pins slipped quietly from this world. And though she was barely four months old, she took with her a little piece of every heart she had touched.
When first we met the cheery Mary, she was the bigger of two tiny twins, a bright spark of mischief and determination whose imperfect little mouth had brought her into our care. And, as fate would have it, brought her brother, Mister Popover, into our lives too.
For when two-day-old Mary left the world he knew, her little brother struggled to feed, and it seemed that what he needed most was not simply nourishment, but her.
Reunited at sanctuary, they were rarely far apart. Whether Mary was cradled beside her brother with his head resting across her back or the two were grazing side by side, it was clear they were bound by something more than blood alone.
Oh, how we loved those two.
And Mary, with her little beige love heart tucked inside her hind leg, her wonderfully determined ways and that unforgettable grin when she looked our way, grass poking comically from either side of her mouth. How could we not adore her?
But slowly, the little lamb who once towered over her brother began to fall behind.
A heart murmur was our first warning that all was not as it should be. And as further congenital abnormalities revealed themselves, we came to understand that love, for all its extraordinary power, could not mend everything.
Yet it could make every moment matter.
And so we loved her. Through every hopeful day, every setback, every small triumph and every moment when her fragile little body asked more of us than we had ever imagined it might.
This morning, one by one, our team came to say their goodbyes, each carrying the particular sorrow that comes from having nurtured a fragile life with such tenderness and hope. And Mister Popover came too. Whether he understood, we cannot know. But perhaps, on some level, he sensed that the sister who had once filled his world with such joy was no longer quite herself.
And to our beautiful team, whose hearts are breaking tonight, we honour your tears.
For there is a particular courage in loving someone you know you may lose and loving them anyway.
Mary Pop-pins was never simply a lamb with a failing body. She was a sister, a friend, a mischievous little soul and someone whose absence will be felt in a thousand quiet ways.
Four months was never enough for a life so full of love.
For the worth of a life is not measured in the years it lasts, but in the simple, extraordinary truth that it was lived, loved and mattered.
Sleep softly, sweetest Mary.
We would have loved you for a lifetime. And we did.
"If we could live happy and healthy lives without harming others, why wouldn't we?"
