Buli

Bodies are different. Not everyone experiences physical pain in the same way, or reacts identically to affliction. Some infections, for example, may not cause a fever, especially in older people and children. I learned this when my grandmother, toward the end of her life, was sick with a urinary tract infection, which the staff at her retirement home was slow to discover because she had no fever. And I remembered it again recently, when our donkey became ill. I still thought of him as ours, though I was no longer the owner. “What happened?” I asked my son, who gave me the sad news that our pet was very sick. The donkey’s lungs had filled with fluid, though he had no elevated temperature. Soon, despite the vet’s attentions, he died.

We acquired our donkey as a two-year-old after we saw him in a nearby field, when the family lived in Gijón. We liked the look of him, and the owners agreed to sell, so we walked our new animal down the road and back home—our home and now his—using a red lead rope with a heavy brass clip. It was a dirt road back in those days, 25 years ago. He came with a name—Buli.

Buli’s chief purpose was to keep our Asturcon pony from being lonely. How often does a solution become a problem? The Asturcon soon had to be sold because of her severe allergy to the eucalyptus trees on the property. Now, keeping Buli company was the problem. The boys were young, and we spent time outdoors in the field—picnics, donkey rides, exploring the woods. Some creative fencing allowed Buli to come right up to the house and look in the window. We didn’t get him a companion; we were his companions, and I think he was content.

The boys grew, got their own friends, and began spending less time at home. The two adults living in the house became just one, me. I cleaned Buli’s hooves, got him his shots, built him a new shed when his old one crumbled from weather and age. About a dozen years ago, after our two dogs died, the boys and I got a new puppy, a friendly black Lab that liked to run up and down the field with Buli in hot pursuit. Then they would reverse roles, and Oso chased Buli. Oso loved Buli, and surely Buli loved him back.

Buli was older than Oso, but a pet donkey typically lives 30 to 40 years, so we expected Buli to outlast Oso by a decade. He was practically a dragon to Oso’s little boy, though he couldn’t know that or what it meant. But he learned. It happened when an abandoned German shepherd we named Toby entered the picture and, just like that, Buli lost his pal and playmate. It was Puff enduring and Jackie Paper moving on. Puff the same frolicking dragon but Jackie trading his toys for other interests and other friends.

My kids grew up. When the family house had to be sold, I was living there with one of my sons, two cats, two dogs, and Buli. The animals could go with me—except Buli. What would become of him?

Instead of the house getting sold to a third party, I sold out to my ex-husband, and Buli kept his home. The day I left the house behind—the house where I’d lived for 20 years and the only home my two sons remembered—I hugged Buli goodbye. He would be on his land, same field, same paths, sheltering in his same shed, with a hand he knew stroking his back and scratching his nose. He’d be fine.

He was. He even got a new companion in the form of a young donkey. What will become of that new donkey now, and who will be her friend? Meanwhile, Oso grew old with his friend Toby. When Oso died, a month shy of Buli, Toby became despondent. No—let’s be real. He was heartbroken. What’s the solution to this problem? I don’t know because I’m gradually realizing that I am not a dragon to endure the changes around me. None of us are.

Everyone changes—spouses, friends, parents, children. Think of how your parents were once the answer to all problems, and then they change and become, over time, another problem. As for your kids, growing up and buying a motorcycle, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and doing drugs are just a few ways they might change; other children never grow up, also a source of worry and chagrin. And then there are the changes we hardly notice in ourselves, as a plant might not be aware of its wind-driven shape. My mother remembers one day in the hallway of the family home in New Orleans, when she happened to come face to face with her father. She was about 16 at the time. “Oh, I wish you were the way you used to be,” he said to her. At the time, the comment infuriated my mother, but now she understands: It was around then that she quit being herself in some sense and began to be someone new, the person she thought she was supposed to be.

Buli was supposed to survive Oso, and he did—but only by a couple of weeks. He wasn’t supposed to die at 25. And although we all know it happens, people aren’t supposed to get old and infirm. In general, we want them consistently young and consistently happy. And not like Buli as I picture him that last week, allowed into the front yard, standing there with his head bowed, his lungs full of liquid and his nostrils full of mucus. His breathing was labored, his end approaching. It wasn’t my hand that stroked him, but he wasn’t alone, was he? That’s got to count for something—for both of us.

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