I'm readin a book called 'Leaning Into The Wind'...it's a series of essays and poems by women about their life as farmers, ranchers, and homsteaders on the high plains.  This essay is by Louise Steneck, and it;s called 'The Handmaiden'.  I found it quite powerful.....I think that you might too.

'This is how I helped him die.

He was a tiny piglet, no larger than my hand, born with a gaping hole in his skull.  His few alloted hours of life would be hours of suffering.  I lifted him from his mother's side and held him for a moment against the warmth of my beating heart.  I stroked his underbelly, as smooth and soft as a baby's bottom, and hummed a quiet melody to still his fear.  The I placed him gently on the concrete floor and smashed his fragile little head with a hammer.  I dropped his body in a bucket and went back to my chores.

I am death's hamdmaiden.  I am there when the great old sow with pneumonia rattles her last breath and, with a great shuddering of her massive body, leaves this place and time.  I am there when the blizzard comes roaring through the night like a mighty freight train, smothering pigs huddled in their shed, freezing piglets solid in an hour.  I am there when the dog is run over on the road, when the hail batters the garden to a memory, when baby sparrows fall out of their nest and are eaten by the cat.

I can't talk to anyone I know about this.  My friends are town people and death is not as real for them.  Death is something they see on television or read about in the newspapers.  Death is the painted imitation of life displayed in open coffins at funerals.  Death in an unidentifiable road kill at sixty miles an hour.

I feel sorry for them, and for the millions in this country who are so far removed from the natural order of things that death does not seem real.  They rise to the ring of alarm clocks in houses shuttered against the world.  Their days are spent in cars and offices and stores. They eat food from packages printed with unpronounceable ingredients.  They fall asleep in the blue glow of the television.  They believe their lives will last forever. 

They don't see how the sun rises with all the fanfare of a circus coming to town. The trumpets blare, the lions roar, and the clowns turn somersaults and shout "Get up, get going!  Smell that bacon frying! Feel that soft breeze blowing! Hear those birds singing! Life is short!  Enjoy! Enjoy!"

They've never watched a lamb plop wet and shining from his mother's womb or stooped to smell the endless promise of freshly turned soil or stood out in their nightgowns under a chill October moon to hear the coyotes sing life's haunting song.

Do they know what they are missing?  Somtimes I see them as little balloons, adrift above the wondrous flow of life and death, the harshness and all the beauty.

This is how I helped him live.  He was too long in coming, wrapped in the glistening red afterbirth, his little body still and lifeless.  I reached dwn and pulled him from the smothering pile, felt the faintest flicker of a heartbeat.  I lifted him to my face and placed my lips over his nostrils and blew the tiniest puff of air into his lungs.  I turned him over and massaged his chest, then blew again.  He sensed life, and with a great shake and shudder opened his eyes and breathed on his own.  I dried his wet body, placed him at his mothers nipple, and went about my chores.

I am there when the boar mounts his quivering partner and creates future with his seed.  I am there when the first pale green shoots of corn crack the earth's hard crust and stretch for the sun.  I am there when the puppies wriggle blindly to find their mother's breast, when the prairie bursts into bloom, when the springtime morning is a symphony of birds heralding a new day.

I am life's handmaiden.'