Many Thanks

It was a hard, hard, hard day here yesterday, pretty close to the hardest day ever. So there is no easy way to tell it.

Hannah Belle was not progressing in her labor and suddenly started to go downhill fast. The kids had to come out right away. She was rushed into the hospital for a c-section.

The c-section went well, but the kids - beautiful triplet doelings - could not be saved.

Hannah Belle was discharged immediately with an i.v. and a collection of medicines. It was a rough trip home, but we hoped that she would start to improve once she was settled back in her stall with Betty. That did not happen.

Hannah Belle collapsed and died in the farmer's arms about an hour after getting home. That is hard to write, because once it is written down we have no choice but to believe it. And how could something like that, something so completely impossible, be true.

But it is.

Thanks to everyone who kept sending good thoughts to Hannah Belle.

Thanks to Betty's one-day-old son Cubby, who liked to sleep right next to his grandma, and kept her interested in life even when the going was tough.

Thanks to Hannah Belle for all her beautiful kids. Thanks to Hannah Belle for all the joy she brought us for eight years. Thanks to Hannah Belle for being so completely her mother's daughter. Thanks to Hannah Belle for being Hannah Belle. Nobody else could have done it.

Now she is with her mother, and her daughters.

And we are here without her.

Hannah Belle and her Farmer.