When I lose my appetite...  When I have to force myself to eat...  It's often a sign I'm grieving...  Today is one of those days...  A little duckling I just started to get to know...  Watching it joyful frolic and follow it's mother...  Down the chute of the small waterfall, and back up again...  Staying underneath its mom for shade while along the edge of the pond...

Now I see a mother duck all alone.  Her lone duckling to hatch is now gone.  She sits along the edge alone, surveying the area as if there were still a glimmer of hope.  She quacks intermittently, looks around, but no young one to be found...

When our severed connections are cleaved, it's as if a part of us is taken, leaving behind a phantom limb, or even a phantom heart...  Gone, but we can still feel those we have lost...  It only takes a few thoughts, or even subtle reminders to remember our past connection...

I'm curious to see how nature deals with loss...  For now the mother duck is still eating...  She's still swimming...  But now she swims alone...