no explanations

on riding and grief

Come back with me into the arena. By now, you know, here is where I confront myself, here is where I ride out joy and anger, frustration and delight, where I can’t show up dressed in the clothes of competence or togetherness.

Today I ride my grief. This work is ending, for now, this season closing quick. A few weeks ago the beloved horse I have ridden for two years stepped into his retirement - the right thing for his body, the gentler life he’s earned, ride upon ride upon ride.

So I’m on another horse - beloved, too, but different. I didn’t know how much he carried me until I’m on her and her body is a stranger. I don’t know how to respond to what happens, or more specifically, I can’t make my body do the things I did with him. My trainer tells me nothing has changed - “it’s the same cue, you do the same things with your body,” and she turns in a circle inside the circle we’re riding telling me the same things I’ve heard a hundred times - “chest up, sit in, sit back, get out of her face!” I just keep going around the circle, faster and faster, and we don’t canter, and I can’t ride it. I can feel that this is not my horse and I can’t say anything but I’m suddenly so sad I can’t entirely breathe. This horse isn’t him. And my body isn’t the same on her body, and her canter isn’t his canter. I can’t get it, and I go and I go, and now someone stands at the rail of the arena watching this, watching me. What do they see? I finish and I get off and I fall silent.

I can’t speak because I can’t explain. I can’t explain because grief has no good explanation.

I go out to his field. I step ankle deep in the mud of these strange summer rains. He stands gently next to me and breathes. He searches me for treats. And then, and only then, do I let myself cry.

“She isn’t you,” I tell him. “I don’t know how to do this with other horses. I don’t know how to do this when we move to Austin. I don’t know how to stay in this sport and keep going and keep learning without you, without a barn to ride at, without time, without money, without…”

He breathes next to me. He’s covered in mud from rolling around. I breathe him in, my face buried in his mane, my arms around his neck.

And God says,

grief asks no explanations.

it asks to be.

it asks to breathe.

And God says, stand next to him.

I have two rides left before we move, and I don’t know what they’ll be like or feel like. The horses are ones I love, mares with their own delights and challenges. I know I will meet myself, as I do every ride. I know I will be shown more of who I am, I know I will be met by the honesty that only this space has shown me.

But I’ll go stand out there with him, every time, and put my arms around him and breathe next to him. Whatever canter I can ride or can’t, however well or haphazardly I use my body, I can’t run from missing him.

So we’ll go breathe together, and explain nothing.