I’d written a cheery blog post for tonight. One to keep my spirits up, but it’s no use pretending, we all pretend too much as it is, it’s easier that way. So I’ve put my cheery post on hold until tomorrow maybe.So here goes - forget cheery and get ready for sad and angry.
We let Chester go to his new home today. We’ve known that we couldn’t keep him for a while now. Holly has and needs to have other priorities – A levels, boys, university - and horses need riding, they make expensive pets and the cost is a pressure.
He’s going to a great home. A friend of the owner of the stables where Chester is liveried wants a horse to hack out on, so he won’t be worked hard and he’ll be ridden in beautiful countryside, Newborough Forest, the beach. She lives on Anglesey, has other horses and plenty of land so I’m sure that he’ll be happy and cared for – we can even visit when we want to if Holly (and me) can bear it.
We all know it is best all round - for him, for us, for the future, but…
He was so big when Holly first rode him - she was just nine and so was he, he was her birthday present. Now that she’s almost sixteen she’s grown into him, they respect each other, she’s a good rider and he’s a good horse. I used to be scared of horses, now I can lead him to the field and even feed him a piece of apple from my hand. I used to think that you changed ALL the hay in a stable every day, now I know that you don’t and it’s straw on the floor, not hay – horses eat hay.
We’ve learnt a lot about horses, about responsibility, about Chester’s personality, and now about loss.
And good old Chester, true to form slipped a shoe some time on Friday which meant that Holly couldn’t ride him on this last weekend for that last time. She’d planned a special evening hack down to the river with him - a long one. It couldn’t happen. Why does life do that at the most sensitive of times? She was so upset. So there we have it, another dream slipped through my fingers, one more piece of the old life gone. Will it ever end I wonder?
‘Chester, Chester, doesn’t wear a sou’wester or a string vester, sleeps in a nester, he’s the bester.’ As Holly and I used to sing all those years ago.
I used to be so scared of horses, I never thought that I'd hug one - how wrong I was. Goodbye Ches.
Neil Fishwick commented on Facebook:
ReplyDelete"That is sad."
and he is right, very right indeed.
mmm, I feel for you. We had the same situation, though we hadn't owned for so many years. It's hard, even when it's the right (and only) decision. Still it's a great experience to have had, helped Jenny in many ways, and there will be future rides and horses. x
ReplyDeleteHolly...he's beautiful...you should cherish the time you had with him and know that he'll have a wonderful time in Anglesey in his 'semi-retirement'...but it's sad, very sad...thinking of you all tonight..even your hard-hearted Dad x
ReplyDeleteI was very fed up so I went on your blog to cheer myself up. Now I am wallowing in the depths. I know I encouraged you to make the move and it is the right thing to do but I feel rubbish now. Mind you, I think it was just as well Holly didn't get that last ride in, it would have been too too heart breaking to have brought it to an end.
ReplyDeleteWhat a beauty!
ReplyDeleteI find poetry a wonderful balm. This may speak to you and Holly.
ReplyDeleteIn Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(American Primative)