However, another animal took me by surprise, the old yak(dri). I messed up the age on my instagram account, because sometimes I don’t understand stories correctly. She wasn’t twenty years old, rather she was about twenty when D’s oldest brother was born. Which means that beloved grandma yak was about 50 years old.
Well, one morning D’s niece comes and tells me, ‘Lokyi died.’ At first, I didn’t get it and perhaps she meant, ‘luk’ which means sheep. But nope it was the old yak, Lokyi, who had passed early in the morning. I just had no clue Lokyi was her name. Needless to say, she was slit open and her meat has been slowly consumed over the past week. I believe an offering was also made for her, but I’m not 100% sure as I only half understood the answer D’s eldest brother gave me.
Impermanance can be learned anywhere, but with the amount of animals here it really puts things into perspective. Especially when it comes to life and death. Life is impermanent and many things in our life are not guaranteed to always be there with or for us. Sometimes we need a reminder to let us know that, I suppose Lokyi was that reminder for me.
Since I first wrote this about a week or so ago, Gulu passed in his sleep a few nights ago. Impermanace is evident everywhere we turn.