Horses always saying goodbye...

That may seem like an odd title for a blog post. I suppose it is, but it’s a phrase that has come to my mind often lately.

In Richard Adams’s book Traveller, a novel set during the U.S. Civil War and told from the point of view of Robert E. Lee’s horse, Traveler, “Horses always saying goodbye” is a phrase Traveler often repeats. Men would come to talk with his master, and he would start to get to know their horses. and then the horse and rider would leave. Sometimes when that man came back to talk with the master, he’d be riding a different horse, because the horse Traveler had known had been shot. Sometimes neither horse nor rider ever returned. Horses always saying goodbye.

Long drawn-out goodbyes are the most difficult, it seems to me, although any parting has the potential to be painful. I have done a bit of writing of my great-grandmother’s story, trying to imagine what it was like to leave her home in England to come with her husband and small children to Canada — to the unbroken prairie — in the early 1880s. How searingly painful the goodbyes must have been, knowing that in all likelihood she would not see her parents, siblings, cousins, friends again. I think of watching my parents in the last two years of their lives — the “goodbye” started when they had falls within 5 days of each other, falls which meant they could no longer live in their own home. The “goodbye” continued as I watched Dad slip further and further into dementia, a process that has been rightly termed “the long goodbye”. Then there was the final goodbye as first Mum, then Dad, died within two months of each other.

And that long goodbye continues. Because of a long, harsh winter, followed by an unusually wet spring, we were unable to have the interment of ashes at our little country cemetery until now — the service for both of them will be held on July 9. I didn’t realize until just the last few days how that would open up all the hurt and the grief and the longing again. There wasn’t anything else that could be done, the cemetery just wasn’t accessible, and I wouldn’t have wanted to have their ashes buried anywhere else, but it’s still difficult to reopen the healing wounds.

When I met Julie Andrews in May, I was able to tell her how much her example of resilience, grace under pressure, and optimism had helped me deal with the difficult times of the last two and a half years. I know that she, too, has been dealing with the grief of a final goodbye, during the illness and after the death of her much-loved husband, Blake. None of us is immune from grief. None of us humans here on this planet we call Earth. It helps to try to meet the pain of our various griefs with resilience and grace and optimism — but also with tears, honest tears. Tears are healing. Tears are necessary. Tears are a blessing. I need to remember that, when I think I shouldn’t be crying. It’s all right to cry. Washington Irving said “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” Yes. Oh yes.

Horses always saying goodbye. People always saying goodbye, as well — sometimes over and over and over again. But in those long goodbyes, there is the gratitude of having loved and having been loved. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.