This is one of those times in my life when I am struggling with the twin feelings of loss and an odd sort of relief ... loss of a dear small animal and the relief that comes from knowing that the little creature is finally at peace beyond this world.
My housemate's little cat was put to sleep at the not-so-ripe old age of 14 from kidney failure. Our last three weeks were spent with more intensive medications and with learning how to do subcutaneous fluids for the little cat.
The little cat was patient with me and I was helped by the blue dog who had taken it upon himself to be the cat's nurse/confidant and who watched me carefully from his position on the floor beside us. But it was, of course, all for naught. Some battles you just don't win and I am certainly old enough to know that.
But still our small household has been in mourning lately, not least of all the blue dog who has become very sensitive to where his remaining people are and who now insists on sleeping in his crate again at night with the door closed, if you please. I'm guessing that he feels that when he is in his crate he is relieved from the responsibility of watching over those of us remaining sheep/cattle (I wonder what a herding dog considers his humans to be, come to think of it) and that once in his crate he can really get some good sleep.
So we are healing. I reached out to several of my good friends last night after being absent from them during our small time of strife and realized how comforting it is to have those friends. We didn't touch on the loss so much as just on who was doing what and how they were getting along with it.
Late into the night and now, in the early reaches of the morning, I realize that my group of people are different somehow from the rest of the world. Our world understands what it means to keep solitary all-night vigils in barns alone with the sounds of the night around us fighting our battles with nature with our small armory of medications and our somewhat larger armory of prayers.
We know what it means to concentrate all of our mental energies on silently begging a horse to just try harder to heal and not to allow itself to slip into that much easier path that leads beyond us — at least not yet.
Often the horse is much wiser than we are and we know that, too.
We have all sat in the dirt and dripped tears onto the head of that great beast which has left us to go and find better and less painful pastures elsewhere. But still we hold that beloved head in our laps and we cry for just a little while before getting up and dealing with the next stage of that work and, let me tell you, there is very little in this life that is larger or more inert than the body of a horse that is no longer inhabited by its spirit.
Dealing with that at the end of weeks of aching incipient loss definitely puts you right back into the life of the living.
Horse folks even make friends in different ways from the rest of the world. We don't care what you are or what you have. We care more about what we have shared in this life and how we responded to it and I realize that makes us seem a bit distant.
I once made what became a very lasting friendship when I was looking for someone to show a pony for me because I could no longer zip around beside it.
When we were talking it turned out that I had sat with a certain elegant mare during her last foaling (the mare lived but had aged out of the active broodmare band) and the person with whom I was talking had been the first to ride this mare and get her ready to go to the track almost 20 years before.
We learned of this connection when I mentioned the mare by name and said what a dignified and elegant horse she was — it turned out that, youth aside, that had been her nature all her life and it had very much impressed that other person, too. A friendship blossomed over that.
Two people from different ends of one horse's life, bonding over that lovely creature who existed for all of those 20 years without either of us knowing the other one.
I like to think it was one of her last gifts to a circle of people to whom she had given so many other gifts.
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