How One Rescue Elephant Changed Us: One Year Without Phabeni

A year ago, we experienced one of the heaviest losses in our HERD family. Little Phabeni, a brave and beloved rescue elephant calf, passed away after a long and delicate battle with his health. He was just shy of his first birthday.

For seven months, we fought beside him through every up and down, celebrating each small milestone, holding hope tightly in every moment of progress and comforting him in his most vulnerable hours. Despite all the care, love and support from his human and elephant family, his little body could not overcome the many challenges it faced.

His passing was deeply felt by all of us. Adine, his carers, the HERD Team, supporters around the world and especially by his adoptive elephant mother, Setombe, who had embraced him with such fierce, protective love. The grief has been as complex as it has been profound, and the months since have been filled with moments of remembrance, reflection and healing.

Today, one year later, we take a moment to honour Phabeni’s memory and to hold space for the little life that meant so much to so many. The loss remains, but so does the love. And in that, he continues to live on.

Below is a letter from our founder, Adine Roode. It is a letter to Phabeni. Tender, raw, unfiltered, capturing not only the depth of love we held for him, but also the honest, aching journey of grief we’ve walked in the wake of his absence.

It is one year since you left this world.

You would have turned two this year.

We still miss you, my little BeniPeni.

We’ve clung to your memories, your spirit, your smell.

We still have conversations about you.
Setombe and me.
Tokwe and me.
But also Kumbura, and of course your older sister, Meisiekind.

Okay, maybe it’s just me chatting, reminding them of things you did.

I still apologise to them, because how could they have known everything you went through that dark night?

When Stavros and I spooned with you,
Soothingly stroking you and whispering in your ear,
Making promises not to give up on you.

We didn’t give up on you.
Your body gave up.
How could we have known that septicaemia was fighting against our promises?

I am so sorry, little BeniPeni.

They say time heals.
But we don’t know what it’s like to stand in Setombe, Tokwe, or Kumbura’s shoes.
(Not that they have shoes, but that’s just the idiom we humans use.)

People mean well.

But we aren’t elephants.
And at the end of the day, we don’t speak your rumbles or your language.

We say to each other, and to Setombe and Tokwe, that at least you’re no longer suffering.

We talk about closure.
That maybe if we get a new orphan, it will reduce the pain.

That pain,
It strikes your heart like a spear.
It’s so intense, you hold your breath and hope it goes away.

But here’s the thing.

We, as humans, don’t really know the pain Setombe experiences.
Or the thoughts Tokwe might have,
Thoughts wrapped in doubt, not trusting us,
Like when she lost her whole elephant family in Zimbabwe.

We’re supposed to look after the planet.
The wildlife, the plants, the ecology, the oceans and all that’s within.
But we don’t.
We let the planet die.

We went back to normal.

The day you died, we went back to normal as if nothing happened.

But something big happened.

Death came.
And life continued as if we hadn’t lost you,
And Kenneth,
To the black hole of grief.

We can’t carry you in our lives anymore.
But we carry you in our hearts.
It’s heavy.
And sometimes light,
As memories come alive and shine with angel smiles that dance through the leaves and grass.

The way you used to open your ears, trying to scare off anyone and anything,
Away from your adoptive mother and her entourage.

Then you’d hurry back to feed with her.
Your trunk was still lousy, but to us you were the best.

We measured your activity and were proud of you, alongside Setombe and the herd.

Your adoptive mum missed you a lot.

She carried on though, because she had to.
She’s still alive.
She has Klaserie and the rest of the herd.
She’s begun to spend all her time with Klaserie again.

We noticed this.
We were relieved.

She didn’t tell us her feelings.
We guessed.
Humanising it.
Elephants are intelligent, sentient beings.
So we reflect our feelings onto your species.

We try to understand.

But do we?

Do we listen to your rumbles, or do we just hear them?

I sat with Setombe again last week.
I told her the things I could remember.
She listened.
I think she understood.
She came and smelled my shoes.
She let the smell linger in her trunk.
She smelled and gripped my foot again to get a better angle.

Her trunk dripped to increase her smell.
They were the shoes I wore with you.

I can’t smell you anymore.
She can.
Setombe can.

We sat together.
Okay, she stood.

But I guess I just sat and listened to her feeding next to me.
We were feeding our own memories.

I just want her to stand by me.
To walk next to me.
To share with me the wonderful memories of you.

Just let us be.
An odd pair. Man and elephant.

We can’t carry you in our lives anymore.
But we carry you in our hearts.

We love you, Phabeni.
We always will.

You don’t know how grief rearranges every part of you.

You don’t know how long the silence lasts after everyone else goes back to normal.

You don’t know what it’s like to carry someone in your heart because you can no longer carry them in your life.

So, if you haven’t been there yet, I’m truly glad.

I hope that day doesn’t come for you for a very, very long time.

But please,
Don’t tell me how I should be grieving.
Don’t tell me what joy should look like right now.

Just sit with me.
Walk beside me.
Or let me be.