How do you say good bye to your heart? Little by little. Piece by piece. Sometimes all at once, but mostly in stages….in waves, but never completely. You have good days, and you have bad days. There are triggers. Some make complete sense. Some come out of no where. There are no rules to grieving, I’ve heard it said. There are the “Stages of Grief.” There are different degrees of grief based on the weight of your loss – the amount of value that the object of your loss added to your life.
Well, Easy added a great deal of value to my life….and I miss him terribly.
It was Friday, August 30th, and I was home with a sick stomach. I’d been fighting something for days, and this day was the worst of it so I chose to stay in bed. It was the first day in three and a half weeks after Easy’s miraculous recovery that I hadn’t filled my day with barn visits to make sure he had everything he needed and to monitor his progress closely. I had just begun to feel comfortable with stepping away a little. I had picked up a few more hours at work. I was trusting Rachel, the young lady who owns the barn at which I board, to be more a part of his care. I was relaxing into my new normal of having a special needs horse. Was my choice to stay in bed the final straw in Easy’s demise? I certainly have entertained that idea….a million times. You see, if I had gotten up that morning as usual and gone to the barn to prepare his hay net and soak his alfalfa cubes, to clean his stall, and give him fresh, clean water I would have known something was off. I knew him that well. If I had returned after he finished his breakfast to turn him out, I would have seen that he wasn’t himself and gotten him help sooner, perhaps diverted the crisis (the bargaining stage of grief).
There was a bit of a communication gap that day between Rachel and myself. I had texted that if she could give him his breakfast I would be out later to check on him. She responded, asking if I would like her to turn him out as well. I responded with a thankful, “Yes,” and settled in to my bed, grateful for some extra rest. Rachel never responded to my last text, and it nagged at me for most of the day. Easy usually ate his breakfast then was turned out about eleven o’clock to join his “girlfriend,” my mare Annie, in the pasture to enjoy being a horse and experience a break from the more restrictive lifestyle of being a horse with special needs. I felt a troublesome need to head to the barn or at least reach out to Rachel one more time to make sure she had turned him out. Finally, I heard from her. She said she would be home around three o’ clock to turn him out and that she was sorry it was so late. Ooh. Three o’ clock. That is late. That wasn’t good. He might be getting stressed being locked in his stall, roomy as it was, for that long. Then the phone call came. Rachel never calls. Unless it’s bad. And it was bad. Really bad. Easy was lying down in his stall….colicing. We were back at square one. I got dressed before Rachel completed her sentence. My husband and I were on our way to the barn in seconds. The vet had been called. Easy was being hand walked when I got there. I made a quick evaluation of his stall….water had been drunk, most of his breakfast had been eaten, alfalfa cubes gobbled up…but he was definitely experiencing colic. The vet arrived….just as reflux began dripping from Easy’s nose…..I collapsed to my knees. It was over, and I knew it. I couldn’t put him through anymore.
I wish I could say I made the decision to euthanize him right then and there. That’s what I should have done. He was done, and I knew it. If I was any kind of friend, I would have put aside my selfish desires to continue to try to preserve a life I simply wasn’t ready to live without. But one last trip to a vet hospital, an overnight stay in hopes of another miracle, additional time for me to accept and adjust,…and I finally said good bye. I’m still saying good bye….every time I go to the barn and he’s not there; when I stumble across a piece of his tack (I found his halter in my garage the other day); when a “memory” pops up on my Facebook timeline; writing this post; when the wind blows, when the sun sets, when I close my eyes, when I open my eyes, when I breathe…..you get it. I miss him everyday and always will.
“It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don’t agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.” – Rose Kennedy
By no logical means should Easy have survived that first life-threatening episode, but he did. I am convinced that those last three and a half weeks spent with my Easy boy were a gift – a precious gift – for which I will forever be thankful. It was nothing short of a miracle hand delivered by my Heavenly father because He knew how badly I needed it.
It is January 7th – National Western Stock Show time in Denver. All the thrill and excitement of “the best 16 days in January” are in the air. Easy should be here. We should be gearing up for the kick-off parade through the streets of downtown Denver. I should be making plans to meet my cousin and our entourage, manes braided, saddles polished, boots shined. But not this year. Not this parade. I considered riding a different mount – a friend’s horse (my horse Annie is not quite parade ready), but it’s nowhere near the same as riding your own trusty steed, experiencing the buzz, the sights and sounds of riding your horse smack dab in the middle of downtown Denver with Union Station as our back drop….the tall buildings, steaming manholes, hissing buses, delighted on-lookers, all of us feeding off the energy of each other and our horses (they love it too) as we immerse ourselves in this horse lovers’ pinnacle. No, not this year.
“Grief never ends…but it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is neither a sign of weakness nor a lack of faith. It is merely the price of loving someone.” – Vicki Harrison
Grief is a part of life…if we have ever loved anyone or anything. We grieve many things in life – the loss of a relationship, a job, a loved one, a beloved pet, or even a season of life. I have read that there are anywhere from two to seven stages of grief. I believe in at least five. They don’t necessarily happen in order, and you can bounce back and forth between all of them. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I found this simple article called “What You Should Know About the Stages of Grief” that outlines the stages of grief in an easy-to-understand method. Of course I would never wish grief upon anyone, yet if not for grief there would not have been love. And the greatest of all things is love.
2 Comments
Well said . Love and grief unfortunately go hand and hand. But the memories are yours to keep.
Thank you for taking the time, Beth. I love how you said, “the memories are yours to keep.” They indeed are, and I will….forever.