Recently, I watched a video put out by Hoedspruit Elephant Rehabilitation and Development Trust (HERD). Loving all things elephant, I’ve been a follower on YouTube for several years now and get notifications when new vlogs are released, often watching first thing in the morning. For me, nothing beats watching an elephant elephant-ing to get the day started. 

While most of their videos serve to educate the public and showcase their 16-elephant herd, the day-to-day operations at the homestead, or to fundraise, yesterday’s was none of those. Israel Shambira, one of their senior elder elephant carers, had died. The video was both a memorial and a tribute; a remembrance of a life given over in service of caring for rescued endangered elephants and a deeply heartfelt expression of respect, admiration, and gratitude for the wise, loving soul that he was. Apparently Israel had been one of the original carers at HERD, arriving from Zimbabwe in March of 2002 and was regarded by many of his colleagues as a father figure, uncle, and friend. 

What wasn’t mentioned in the video was the cause of death, only a reference to a ‘tragic incident’ between Shambira and elephant Limpopo. Unable to imagine, I watched with tears in my eyes as fellow carers gave testimony to Israel and the indelible mark he made on their lives. My curiosity ever growing, I finally decided to pause the video and consult google to find out what happened. Several keystrokes later, I found the answer; Limpopo, HERD’s first to be born in their care, who had just celebrated her 19^th birthday a month earlier, and who Shambira himself had helped raise, had, after knocking down a tree while out in the bush, unexpectedly and unprovoked, turned her attention to Shambira, goring him to death. Fellow colleagues were unable to save him. 

On their Instagram page, with full transparency, HERD announced that after the incident they attempted to relocate Limpopo with several companion elephants but that she continued to demonstrate uncharacteristic aggressive behavior, posing risks to both the carers and elephants around her. As a result, after much deliberation and consulting with additional experts, the decision was made to humanely euthanize her. It was heartbreaking to hear. And while there was a large outpouring of compassion and deep sadness at the loss of both Shambira and Limpopo from their followers, some were not so kind, expressing judgment and outrage at Limpopo’s euthanization, with one follower exclaiming, “They killed a healthy 19-year-old elephant, for acting like an elephant.” 

I decided to watch the YouTube video again. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for but found I could not get the story out of my head. I kept thinking to myself, This is it. This is what it means. This is what it looks like and who’s to say what that is. I’m referring here to author and spiritual teacher Byron Katie’s famous teaching, “There’s your business, my business, and God’s business.” 

As I sat, eyes transfixed on the screen again, I thought, Israel and Limpopo were God’s business. Beyond that we cannot know. And I sighed deeply, a feeling of eerie calm washing over me. 

When my husband Nelson died last year at age 53 from complications that developed while undergoing treatments for stage 4 urothelial cancer, like that angry Instagram follower, I felt like a crime had been committed, an injustice had occurred. A sufferer of chronic illness his entire life, he was forever vulnerable to a multitude of different conditions, propensities born from the root condition of warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia. And yet, even with knowing all the vulnerabilities that were his normal, I was always still grasping to control, a part insisting I could somehow reverse what nature – what God had put into place. 

Learning to Accept the Unacceptable

In brain retraining circles there is this concept of coregulation. Rooted in attachment and Polyvagal theory, it asserts that humans are social creatures and therefore respond to the nervous system states of those in their presence. Coregulation is seen as a dynamic, bidirectional process where each person’s emotional and nervous system state affects the other. Our calm has the ability to bring a measure of calm to those around us and vice versa. 

Having been brain retraining for several years for my own chronic illnesses, through the filter of an overly active fear based brain which already believed I was responsible for the challenges and difficulties experienced in life, further exasperated by an individualistic culture that says we are the sole creator of our reality, and in the face of loss, I took this bit of coregulation science to mean that had I done a better job of regulating my own nervous system, Nelson’s nervous system would have come into regulation too, and the conditions that gave birth to the diseases that ultimately took his life would not have occurred. 

For many months afterwards, I vacillated between feelings of sadness, frustration, grief, and varying states of confabulation as my mind tried to make sense of his health journey, the how and why of its unfolding a perpetual mystery. Preferring anything else other than the ocean of tears that greeted me like a tsunami most days, I raged inwardly, my mind wanting to believe that something had been under my control; that supposedly knowing all the facts, I should have somehow been able to change the course, that had I done and said certain things differently, I would have changed the outcome…that he should be alive. I found guilt, self- blame, and vilifying myself easier than accepting the truth: Nelson died and nothing on my part could change that.

Hearing of Shambira’s death and the manner in which it occurred stopped me in my tracks. Whatever insistent and habitual guilt had been holding me hostage up until then finally began to loosen. With each subsequent viewing of those testimonials and statements on HERD’S Instagram page, I found myself humbled and silenced. My attention arrested by the horror of it, the sheer unpredictability, the painstaking decision by HERD leadership to euthanize Limpopo, and the full awareness that there are certain things in this life we just cannot know. 

Whatever caused Limpopo to impale Shambira will never be known, at least not from this side of the veil. That Nelson developed an E.coli infection, suffered organ failure, and developed edema and ascites while his cancer was in remission will be something I will never understand. But it is something I must accept. Recognizing that we are not in control is not easy. We can do our best to meet each moment with equanimity, set intentions to act with intelligence, care, and compassion. And then it’s out of our hands. 

I still have moments of ‘what if’ and ‘if only’. That’s my trauma history on display. It has been my conditioning to believe that when things go wrong or cause me pain, that I am at fault, that I am to blame. I am responsible. And then I look at the facts. I spiral back to Shimbira and Limpopo, to the whole of human history and remind myself: Living things die. People die. Whether by disease, famine, war, natural disasters, accidents, or old age, if it is alive, it will eventually die. And while we can take actions to mitigate challenging circumstances, to intervene and support, to prolong death – no amount of human effort, analysis, or blame can alter this inevitability. That is God’s business. 

In the meantime, I grieve. I brain retrain. And I think of Nelson. I think of the time we shared and the love between us. I remind myself I did my best. That is my business.