Grief - Its a journey with no destination and no schedule

Loosing a friend - in this case Squirt, one of our herd.

I have faced grief, the loss of my Mother, the loss of my Sister, the loss of fury friends and human ones. But it was the loss of Squirt that taught me the most. This sounds insane given he was an animal but all to often animals are brushed off as not being as ‘important’ or as ‘painful’ to lose.

Spending the last five years with my herd has taught me the importance of finding the beautiful moments, the moments that sit within the big picture emotion. In Squirts case the emotion was initially sadness followed by the usual, anger etc. But within the sadness there were moments, snippets if you like of absolute joy. You see horses live in the moment, not the past, not the future but the right here and now. So even knowing that Squirts chances were bleak I chose to be one of the herd, I made a chose to be part of the here and now.

This moment, the one your are seeing in the photo came immediately after the vets told us his chances were slim, immediately after his lungs showed significant pneumonia and aspiration of his food. But he was happy, he wanted me to be there with him, to actually be with him not with him in body and my mind in sorrow but in my entirety to be with him. So I chose that, I chose to be there in my full self, mind and body. I chose to accept that ‘yes I was sad, yes I knew the immense grief to come’ but with acknowledging this and giving it space it allowed me to take in this very special moment.

I am truly glad I gave myself the space to have this moment. To look into his eyes and see his joy just as my smile exudes in the photo. You see grief is a journey, with peaks and troughs. It is different for everyone and there is no schedule or final destination, just the journey. I chose to sit with the journey, for the first time in my life. I didnt try and hide from it, I didnt try and wallow it in. I just let it be.

Horses grieve, they grieve for a lost member of their herd. I watched Squirts Mum, Flower, grieve. She wouldnt eat, she refused to drink and wouldnt move from the corner of her paddock. I didnt force her to function. I didnt drag her from the space she needed. Instead I was there for her. I would go to her, touch her if she wished, or not if she refused. I gave her space, no opinion, no advice, no force feeding, I simply accepted that she knew what she needed to do. The same respect I gave myself during my time of grieving for Squirt.

To all the dear fury friends I have lost, thank you! Thank you for being part of my journey but most of all thank you for letting me be part of yours. To my friends and family of the non fury kind, I thank you for the exact same.