My house looks out on a little pond, and I've grown rather attached to the geese and ducks and water birds that live on and visit it. One of them, a Muscovy duck I've watched grow from a baby over the last nine months or so, died last night. I'm not sure how, but whatever killed it left the body behind.

All day today, one of its siblings has stayed close by, shifting into the shade or plunging into the water whenever it got too hot, but always returning. Mostly, it just sat on the grass, but every once in a while, it would try to talk to its sibling, wagging its little duck tail and bobbing its head. And then it would pluck playfully at its siblings' feathers and tuck its head under the body as if to urge it to stand.

I don't know if the duck just doesn't understand that its sibling is dead, or if it knows and keeps trying to rouse it anyway, but it's been heartbreaking to watch it sitting vigil and perhaps mourning all day. I keep thinking how very hard it is to face a bond being severed like that. Whatever shape a being takes in your life, when they die, that shape is left empty. You can learn to accept the hole they leave, but a part of you will keep trying to reach out to them anyway.

These ducks aren't people, and I'm trying not to anthropomorphize them: they have their own way of experiencing the world that doesn't have to bear any resemblance to the way I do. But I am still so sorry that they've lost a part of their family. I'm sorry that when they wander the pond, there will only be three of them now instead of four. And I'm especially sorry that all the persistent duck chatter and patient waiting will not bring their sibling back.