June 20
Two weeks ago, after the doctor here checked Dani’s baby, they were sent to Community Hospital in Missoula to be checked and monitored overnight (see ‘Tribute’ at bottom). Ammarie was doing better by next day so Andrea brought them home.
Later that week we had a vet look at Barney, our new bull. We were worried about the lump on Barney’s lower jaw, and Dr. Abbey confirmed our suspicions — it’s a bony lump. We might be able to clear it up with several treatments of sodium iodine given IV, but prognosis isn’t good. I called Kit Pharo, since we bought the bull from him and there’s a one-year guarantee. He said it was too late in the season to replace the bull, but we could use him and replace him this fall, with our purchase price (minus salvage value) going toward a new bull.
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Last weekend Charlie helped get the haying equipment ready to go, greasing it, checking hydraulics, changing oil, and hooking the swather up to the tractor. The hay is nearly ready to cut. Andrea shut the irrigation water off our fields a while back and it’s dry enough — if the weather clears up!
MORE ‘Rancher’s Diary: Cattle out on pasture for another season
July 14
We were finally able to start haying after the setback from several days of rain and the family crisis that that took precedence over everything else. Getting back to tasks at hand — trying to get hay harvested between storms and machinery breakdowns, has been therapeutic. Dani has been staying with her friend Talesha but they came several days to help with haying, and this has been good for Dani, to be doing something useful and keep her from focusing only on her grief.
Tribute to a great-granddaughter
Editor’s note: In late June the Thomas family was cast into grief as Ammarie, the great granddaughter of Heather Smith Thomas, was found in medical distress. Emergency medical efforts in Idaho and at a Salt Lake City hospital were unable to revive the infant.
There will be a memorial service later for Ammarie, so I wrote a few things I’d like to say in remembrance of that special little girl, and I will share them here.
When Lynn and I first heard about the baby that would arrive in April, we were excited. When Dani and Roger had us guess if it would be a boy or a girl we were hoping for a girl — our first great-granddaughter. We have four great-grandsons and thought it would be very special to have a little girl.
We were given a pink heart and a blue star, to have us guess until they knew what the baby would be. When we found out, we put the little pink heart on our calving calendar that hangs on the kitchen wall, and wrote “It’s a Girl” on it. That little pink heart is still there as a reminder of that special time.
When she was born April 14, on Carolyn’s birthday and a day before Michael’s birthday, we thought that was special, too — a birthday that would be easy to remember in the family cluster of April birthdays — including Ammarie’s second cousin Joseph and her great-uncle Nick.
My favourite photo of Ammarie is the one Emily took the day Dani’s baby was born, with the smiling young mother cradling that precious new little girl in her arms.
Lynn and I got to see her when Andrea brought Dani and baby home from the hospital. We went out in the driveway as they drove past on their way home to Andrea’s house. They stopped briefly so we could get our first close-up look at that beautiful sleeping baby.
She was a sweetie, and charmed everyone who saw her and got to hold her. When Lynn was at Andrea’s house this spring on several occasions to help babysit Christopher, he got to see little Ammarie also.
We grieved deeply when we all lost that little angel, but there was one bright incident amid the grief. A beautiful butterfly hovered around our windows in the sunshine the afternoon before Ammarie was truly gone. Lynn noticed the monarch butterfly that continued to flutter around our kitchen and dining room windows for several hours, as if her little spirit was saying good-by.
We shall miss her deeply, and regret that we won’t have a chance to see her learn to crawl, and walk, and grow into a lovely young woman. But we shall cherish the moments we were able to enjoy her, in her short life, and the brief memories, and hold her forever in our hearts.”
