Grace and Esther
Iwoke up at 3 the night Esther came to live with us. I stood at the top of the stairs listening for her bleating coming from the basement below. Esther was a day-old orphaned lamb. Bum lambs, as they’re called, are less likely to live through their first night. I grew anxious from silence.
“Oh no,” I thought, “Grace will be devastated.” Esther was already very established in my 16-year-old daughter’s heart.
I feared the worst, apprehensively approaching Esther’s enclosure. There, nestled in the straw, sleeping peacefully with baby Esther was Grace. No wonder Esther wasn’t bleating. She had found her mama.
Grace and Esther slept together every night for the next month. They moved from straw in the basement to sheets on Grace’s bed, which Grace washed daily. Grace persuaded her teacher to let Esther come to school and her parents to let Esther come along to Las Vegas on family vacation.
Esther, biologically a Merino sheep, considered herself a human—grace’s human, to be exact. She’d enter the house at will, jumping through an open window if no one was gracious enough to open the door. She was Grace’s shadow—and echo. When Grace left (heaven forbid!), all she had to do was baa when she returned for Esther to come running and bleating.
Little Esther soon became Big Esther, though she was forever Grace’s baby. Once, Grace dressed her in a red cloak and took her trick-or-treating as Little Red Riding Hood. The neighbors invited them inside, where Esther proceeded to nibble on their geraniums and headbutt their standard poodle.
Grace and Esther were a common sight on the streets of Roy, Utah, where we live, and in the halls of Roy High. Most young ladies in the homecoming court chose
boyfriends or brothers to escort them across the stage. Grace chose Esther. As if bringing a woolly companion into the auditorium wasn’t risky enough, Grace left Esther with a student body officer on one side of the stage, walked across to the other, then instructed the officer to let her go.
A sheep loose onstage in front of 600 high school students! What could go wrong? Nothing. Esther performed like the queen she was. Grace baaed and Esther baaed right back. The two happily met at center stage.
Grace moved to attend the University of Utah. Grace would call me and say, “I came to Roy last night but didn’t go in the house. I just needed an Esther fix, so I went to the pasture and hung out with her for an hour.”
Indeed, theirs was a bond to remember. Sadly, in February 2021, it became just that after Esther passed away from birthing complications.
Family is forever, and Esther is family. She is waiting for Grace on the other side of the veil that separates the living from the next life to come. When Grace passes through, she’ll baa, Esther will baa back, and they’ll run to each other, happily reuniting.