It’s been a hard year.

Back in February, we said goodbye to Janey, one of our oldest barn cats. After nursing her in the house for weeks, it became clear that she was just no longer responding to treatment, and I made the decision to euthanize her.

In May, we lost T’Challa unexpectedly. He was one of the cats who came to us during the pandemic. His death hit me hard, as I didn’t see it coming. He’d been showing some intermittent appetite issues, so I knew something was going on, but since he mostly acted normal, I thought we had time to figure it out. We didn’t. His collar hangs in the barn where he lived. I look at it every day, not sure if it’s there to honor him or punish myself. Maybe a little of both.

The worst happened in June, when a friend passed away suddenly. I’d known him for 23 years. During the pandemic, we kept in touch via Skype, and together discovered the joys of watching live animal cams. Our favorites were Mei Xiang, a pregnant panda at the Smithsonian Zoo, and a pair of bald eagles in Big Bear Valley, California named Jackie and Shadow.

We were watching the night Mei Xiang gave birth. Yes, they turned the live feed off, but we knew what was happening, and soon got to witness the insanity that is a 230lb giant panda caring for a cub the size of a stick of butter. The baby panda looked like a mutant lizard-rat and screeched like an owl getting stepped on. But day by day, he grew cuter, fluffier, got the black spots around his eyes, took his first tottering steps.

We were there for all of it. We even got to vote for his name: Xiao Qi Ji, which is Mandarin for “Little Miracle.” He was exactly that.

The precarious panda birth had gone off without a hitch, but when it came to the eagles, things weren’t always so rosy. Jackie and Shadow weren’t sheltered and cared for in a zoo–this was raw nature, live and unfiltered.

The first year we watched, they had two eggs. One got cracked–possibly stepped on. The other started to hatch, the tiny chirps inside sparking hope, only to have the eaglet die without ever making it out.

As the pandemic drew to a close and “in person” became a thing again, my friend and I never stopped watching our animals.

We watched our beloved Xiao Qi Ji and Mei Xiang roll in the snow, splash in water, chomp bamboo, and eventually go back to China when their loan period was up. We watched Jackie and Shadow successfully raise five chicks to adulthood over the years: Spirit, Sunny, Gizmo, Sandy, and Luna. The babies were fluffy and white and adorable, and we treasured their antics. We also watched Jackie sit on her nest through violent snowstorms–only to have the eggs not hatch at all, or to have one of the chicks die unexpectedly.

We learned so much about bald eagles, about how females are larger than males, how their feathers provide insulation against snow and rain, how ravens can be a major threat to an unattended nest. We even followed the live chat often enough that we knew some of the lingo. “SED” was what the chatters said to one another when signing off at night. Sweet Eagle Dreams.

Whenever a clutch of eggs didn’t hatch, and many times they didn’t, it was always Jackie, the female, who seemed to know first that it just wasn’t going to happen. Shadow had a harder time letting go. He continued to sit on the eggs long after Jackie had given up.

Eventually, though, even he got the message Mother Nature was trying to send: Not this time. Try again. And they always did, but not before saying goodbye in their own ways.

Sometimes unhatched eagle eggs fall prey to ravens. Other times, the non-viable eggs simply stay in the nest, gradually getting buried deeper and deeper under new sticks and soft fluff. In a strange way, the losses of the past become a part of the very thing that protects the future.

I’ll never forget one time when, despite Shadow’s eternal optimism, the last remaining egg of an unsuccessful clutch finally got smashed enough that even he knew it was over. With gentle care that seemed to belie the massive birds that they are, one of the parents carefully covered the ruined egg with soft grasses and other nesting material. Then the eagle flew off, and the pair of them sang the sweetest duet against the stunning backdrop of a Big Bear sunset.

Woven in the notes, I heard grief, acceptance, and a promise that as long as they were both still there, they would always try again.

I know there are debates about whether animals can feel grief and loss, comments about us projecting our own emotions onto them. But I challenge anyone to listen to that eagle song, or watch Shadow glimpse one of his newly hatched chicks for the very first time, and tell me that they didn’t feel something. It might not be the same as what we feel, the same complexities of sorrow and joy, but they feel something.

After my friend died, I got the news that Jackie, one of our two most beloved bald eagles, was in bad shape and had been taken to a raptor rehabilitation center for emergency care. They tried so hard to save her, just like I tried to save Janey, like I would have tried with T’Challa, if I’d known. Just like I’m sure the paramedics tried to save my friend that awful day. But despite everyone’s best efforts, which even included a blood transfusion from another eagle, Jackie passed away.

It’s almost poetic that after my friend passed, one of our eagles followed him to the other side. I guess he gets to have Jackie in the great beyond, and I get to keep Shadow here on earth. At least for a while. That seems fair, right?

I know I’ll never see my friend again in this life, just like our eagles will never again sing their sad, sweet song at sunset.

But just like all those eggs, buried deep in the ever-growing nest, our lost loved ones are never truly gone. They are part of us, every day. A collar hanging on the wall, a paw-print pressed in clay, a memory of the world’s very best smile, carrying us into the future on the wings of an eagle.