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ARTICLES
My Ogden Blessing
The Greatest Gift
New Year's Renewal
Blue Christmas
Our Kids Could Use Our Help
Minding My Own Grief
In Green Pastures: Horses Comfort Children’s Grief
A Dream of Horse Assisted Pastoral Care
Equine Assisted Psychotherapy Replaces Conventional Therapy
This Holiday Season, Step Carefully Through the Step-parenting Minefield
Acknowledging Life
When Your Pet Dies
Remembrance
My Ogden Blessing
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Every year at this time, Ogden, Utah becomes host to therapists and horse professionals from all over the world who come together to share knowledge and the latest goings on in the field of equine assisted psychotherapy at the invitation of the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association. Having been a member of the association since 2000, I always look forward to seeing old friends and talking about our work. But one thing has never changed – people everywhere recognize that when someone dies, children and adult family members often need a little help getting through the tough years that follow, and they believe that horses can help with the healing process.
Ideas about just how horses can help therapists come in many shapes and sizes. Some people take a very metaphysical approach to human interaction with horses and see them as possessing virtually supernatural powers. Others see them as animals that tend to bring out latent human qualities that become easier for us to see when we interact with them. Some people seem to just come to the conference to pass judgment on the horsemanship practices of others. But all in all, the air was filled with enthusiasm about how we can all do our work better when we include horses in it.
Over the past few years, Horses Healing Grief has been at the center of my equine assisted therapy discussions when I attend the conference. People share their stories of how they use the activities in their practices, ask questions about things I have done in the past, and generally try to learn how to work more effectively with the bereaved. Others just stop by to share a story from their own grief journeys, hoping to find a compassionate, understanding ear. I treasure those times most, knowing that healing is taking place right then and there.
But this year, I was given a very timely blessing from a woman whose face and name I don’t even remember. She purchased the book one evening and began to read before she went to bed. She could hardly contain her excitement the next day as she made her way back to my exhibit table. I listened for what great new revelations had dawned on her about how children grieve, how she will be adjusting her approach to therapy to include acknowledging and supporting grief in a better way, or that the book had been a new source of motivation. But that is not what I heard. Instead, I heard her say that she had been brought to tears when she read my tribute to my parents. She had been touched by how I described my parents’ influence on my life and work.
What I noticed about her accolade was that she really didn’t know what kind of leader or follower or worker I had become. Rather, she sensed something of the kind of son I seemed to be as she read my words. I don’t know any other way to describe that conversation except to say that she returned a blessing to me.
My parents blessed me with whatever gifts they could muster from their simple lives. I once thought they wanted me to achieve high and mighty things, but by the end of their lives, I realized that they only hoped for me to know love, health, peace, and integrity in my life, and hoped that my life would touch the lives of others. We may have been poor when it comes to money, but in the blessing department, we were quite wealthy.
March is a special memory month for me, and March 19 is a special day. On that day, I uttered “Happy birthday, Mom.” It was the anniversary of the beginning of my mother’s life, and on that day, I remembered how important her life was, and is.
My parents began to shape me into the man I have become. They fed my love of horses that took me to Ogden, Utah, and modeled the kind of caring and helping that would be the envy of the people assembled there. In my book, all I tried to say when acknowledging my parents was that I was blessed to have had them, and one woman’s tears proved to me that it shows. As you remember your loved ones who have died, count the blessings that come back to you because of them. And thank them. Thanks, Mom.
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The Greatest Gift
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And now these three remain:
Faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love
This month, we celebrate the gift of love by celebrating Valentine’s Day. Legend has it that the holiday bears the name of a priest who died in 270 A.D. Observed in mid-February each year, Valentine’s Day is a memorial to someone who loved others so much that it cost him his life. Though stories about Valentine’s life and death vary, it is clear that he has inspired people to love for centuries.
Millions of people will put romance on public display this month, while those of us who mourn a loved one may feel the need for a much deeper kind of love, an unconditional love. I learned about unconditional love from one who could not read, never attended a Sunday school class, cared nothing about philosophy or theology, and didn’t like taking baths. His name is Cooper, a 45-pound Springer Spaniel who died this time last year, only a few days after my brother Harold died.
Cooper was a model of unconditional love. I could see it in his eyes even as he lay lifeless on the table in the veterinary hospital where we spent our last minutes with him. Cooper never met anyone he didn’t like. He never did anything out of spite or anger, never growled or showed aggression toward another creature (except a bird – he was a bird dog, after all), and could inject joy and silliness into any situation. For his entire life, he never wanted to spend a minute apart from my family or me. He could receive love in the form of ear scratching and belly rubs for hours on end, and never stopped showing love in his eyes. As we said goodbye, memories of his life seemed to warm my heart even while it was breaking.
On our last day with Cooper, I remembered something else. We had two Springer Spaniel dogs before him, and lost them in different ways, but we never mourned either of them properly. On top of that, my brother’s death the week before had been sudden, complicated, and confusing. On my own, I didn’t know how to get to the bottom of my feelings, but with Cooper, I did. I discovered that unconditional love knows no boundaries as my love for all of them poured out of me in an instant. Because of Cooper, I felt the release to mourn them all: Dodger, Sunny, and my brother Harold. Through my tears, I thanked Cooper as I stroked his silky fur one last time, and felt my broken heart begin to heal.
Some say that we grieve because we have loved. This season of love may be a time when you are more aware of your grief, simply because you know that you have loved someone who loved you, and that they are no longer with you to express that love as in the past. It can also serve as a reminder that unconditional love never fails.
Humans have so many complications that sometimes we falter in showing love unconditionally, but I learned from Cooper that the very love that causes us pain can transcend the grave and help us heal. If it can do that, it can transcend anything.
In honor of my late best friend Cooper, I name him my Valentine, because he gave me the greatest gift of all. I am better for having known and loved him. I only hope I can live up to his example of unfailing love every day of my life
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New Year’s Renewal
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We are not making new cloth, just weaving new strands into the fabric of the lives that we had together.
Have you broken any New Year’s resolutions? Many people have. Change is hard, so we make promises that we can’t keep. We make resolutions because we want to change something, but the death of a loved one brings change that we don’t want and can’t stop, sort of like an unwelcome extreme makeover. Wanted or unwanted, how we respond to change can influence both our present and our future. For those who are facing the future without a loved one who died recently, I propose that the traditional New Year’s resolution be set aside in favor of a new year’s renewal.
Renewal is making an old thing like new again. The old is always there, but it takes on a new form. The past blends with the present, and gives new meaning to the future. You probably will have a lot of memories of your loved one during the coming year. You can use those thoughts and feelings to start your renewal if you put your mind to it.
Mourners have taught me a couple of important things about memories:
Memories carry both pain and healing.
Many people try not to remember because they fear that they will feel badly if they do. Probably true, but they also can find healing in them. Others try to live life with only pleasant memories, and in so doing may be delaying acceptance that the person is truly dead, hence prolonging their pain. Avoiding the pain doesn’t make it go away.
Mourners feel connected to the deceased when they embrace memories - even the painful ones.
Sometimes people become so aware of this that they fear that they will lose the feeling of connection to the person once the pain stops. Usually, the opposite is true. Embracing the life of the deceased through memorializing, stories, and other healing memories helps mourners feel that their connection to the one who died will never be broken, because the memories become more than just bits of information. In time, they come to represent the person and allow the mourner to move from a place of dreading the loss to a place of cherishing the meaning of the life of the deceased.
Renewal begins with a new way of thinking that allows us to embrace the transformation or makeover that takes place when someone dies. My own makeover is becoming more apparent as we start a new year. When last year began, I had two brothers. Today I have one. The death of my brother Harold has caused me to think about my future without him in the world. I know there are some things that will take time for me to rearrange in my mind and in my soul, such as a new year of birthdays and holidays that must take on new meaning; my children, who saw so much of me in my brother, and who gained perspective on my life that only my brother could provide, have now lost that part of me forever; and I am no longer a little brother - I am now the big brother, and it just doesn’t feel right. As I face each of these issues, I can gain a new understanding of Harold and of myself. I don’t know how things will turn out. I just know that I am resolved to allow the transformation to take place.
Joyful memories of the past can make the future more bearable in much the same way that fears from the past can make a person dread the future. Pleasant memories of our loved ones somehow help us to face the future without them. They also provide us with information that can help us redefine ourselves in light of their absence. Memories - keepsakes, stories, sights, sounds and smells - all help us hold our loved ones in our hearts forever. We are not making new cloth, just weaving new strands into the fabric of the lives that we had together. My daughters always marveled at the uncanny physical (and sometimes behavioral) resemblance between my brothers and me. With their uncle Harold gone, I know that my very presence keeps his memory alive for them, as I am sure that my presence reaffirms his life to his children and grandchildren. In a new world in which we must redefine the one who dies, we also must redefine ourselves.
Teachings of my faith exhort me to a transformation that begins with a new way of thinking about things, a way made possible by eternal change. I don’t know which changes brought on by the death of a loved one are temporal or eternal, but I do know that the transformation that begins when someone dies can last a lifetime.
May you find joy, hope, and strength as the memory of your loved one transforms you in the New Year.
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Blue Christmas
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I’ll have a blue Christmas without you
I’ll be so blue thinking about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Won’t mean a thing if you’re not here with me
(Words and music by Billy Hayes and Jay Johnson)
This popular 1950’s tune has been an anthem of heartbreak for two generations. We tap our toes to it, hum the background refrain, and try to ignore its repetitious tune as it runs endlessly through our heads. Christmas background music more ignored than heard. As we ignore the music, it seems as if we are trying to ignore the heartbreak, too. After all, who really wants to be blue at Christmas time?
Christmas will be especially challenging this year because of what it will mean to my family. My brother, Harold, died this year. Harold was born on Christmas day, and I last saw him when I celebrated his birthday at Christmas time last year. He died five weeks later. Somehow, Christmas day now signifies both his beginning and his end, and never again will I be able to separate the two. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, and the joy of the season
hasn’t totally escaped me, but as it draws near, a new awareness is beginning to creep in. I think I’m going to have a Blue Christmas.
Like a lot of people, I have been in avoidance mode, unprepared to embrace the full impact of the coming day, and not really knowing how to prepare for it anyway. My younger brother provided a speed bump for me this week when he told me that the siblings who live closer to my hometown have made plans to memorialize Harold on Christmas day. I had no plans to return home for the holidays, but that didn’t prevent me having a flash of sorrow and feelings of being left out. Guess you just can’t predict what a grieving heart will do.
If your loved one died recently, chances are you feel like you are hurting while the rest of the world goes on as if nothing happened. Even worse, you may feel like the world demands that you celebrate even though you are hurting. Not that they should not celebrate; it’s just hard for you to fit into all that joy and festivity. It is no secret that grief seems more acute at Christmas.
Early Christian writings contain a letter written by a church leader to the church in ancient Corinth. In his greeting, the writer reminded his readers that those who have been comforted in times of trouble must in turn comfort those who are in any affliction. I have taken this charge personally, and I hope others will, too. We will not all feel the same pain, have the same struggles, or bear the same burdens. But, if we have ever felt relief or comfort in our lives, who among us would not wish that others be comforted when in pain? It doesn’t take much. The simple act of acknowledging the pain of another lets them know that we have not forgotten them in their time of sorrow. You can be sure that many of us who mourn will feel our holiday sorrow over and over again for years to come.
Some churches today offer help for the conflicted feelings that so many of us can have at this time of year. Blue Christmas or Longest Night services are special worship services in which mourning is recognized as sacred, and those who mourn can come together at a special time set aside just for them. They understand that thousands will feel blue each Christmas as the memories and feelings surrounding their losses come to the surface, and let mourners know
that others remember and care about their sorrow. These churches believe that God doesn’t begrudge the mourners’ sadness at Christmas time, and we should not try to force happiness on people who have reason to be sad. Instead of feeling ignored, mourners feel a sense of relief as others acknowledge their pain and remember loved ones who have died. It seems to comfort them and make worshiping easier.
I once read of a mother whose husband of many years died a few months before Christmas. When Christmas rolled around, the family struggled to create new meaning without grandpa. Everything reminded her that he wasn’t there. The climax of the family gift exchange came when she received a two-pound box of chocolates like the ones her husband had always given her on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. The giver, her young grandson, said that he didn’t want her to feel sad because grandpa was not there to give them to her any more. At the end of the day, she observed that her family had given and received gifts of mercy and remembrance, and their souls seemed restored, if only for a short while. I can think of no better way to explain a Blue Christmas.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. We can’t do anything to change the cause of mourning, but with a little thought, we all can do better at comforting each other. Over the years, mourners have taught me some things that help and some that don’t. Remember them this holiday season:
Don’t treat me as if nothing has happened. Forgetting the deceased or the sorrow of survivors can be insulting. Acknowledge the lives of both the deceased and the struggles of surviving family members.
Don’t make a big deal out of the death when it occurred and then forget me during the holidays. I still need you.
Always remember my loved one by name. You help keep their memory alive.
Let me have a place where I can cry and no one will mind.
Many people say that special days like Christmas continue to be hard for them, as feelings of sorrow threaten to overshadow their joy for years to come. I will know for myself all too soon, as I experience my first Christmas without Harold. This Christmas, my faith will confront me with the paradox of a Savior born to die for me, as my family struggles with the bittersweet memory of celebrating Harold’s birthday last year just days before his death. Maybe it will draw me deeper into my faith; maybe it will just make me sadder. Whatever happens,
my Christmases will never be the same again.
If this is a Blue Christmas for you, may you find the comfort you need, and may you receive the blessings that you deserve.
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In Green Pastures: Horses Comfort Children’s Grief
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Sometimes children are left out of a family’s mourning process. Not on purpose - it just happens. When you think about it, you can understand why. Let’s say that a husband dies suddenly of a heart attack, leaving a widow and two children, ages 8 and 5. What goes through mom’s mind? Somewhere amid the whirlwind of funeral arrangements and the settling of business affairs, the reality settles in that she is now leading a family without her partner. Suddenly, her mind is flooded with images of money, logistics, college, insurance, puberty, and on and on. So, if she looks around and observes that the kids are doing okay today, she probably breathes a sigh of relief and turns her attention to other matters.
Add to that the fact that children don’t usually come to the forefront of a family’s mental health needs until they act out or cause some kind of problem. And in that case, only the child who is acting out gets the attention while other sibling gets overlooked. Getting the picture? There are many reasons why a grieving child can be overlooked, and his or her needs may not surface for months, or even years. And they will seek out ways to cope, healthy or unhealthy, as they go it alone without a way to test their sense of reality, or without the necessary comfort that comes from caring adults.
Today, help is available through support programs that use trained adult facilitators and peer support. In an environment where kids can explore the meaning of death, and the feelings and thoughts that surround it, kids prepare themselves for a future without the person who died. In very special cases, horses can play a major role in the healing process. Horses Healing Grief was created for just that purpose, combining the healing power of horses to the supportive relationships of peers who have suffered a similar loss.
In this case, the horse becomes part of a powerful spiritual process. In the well-known 23rd Psalm, the writer speaks of a journey. Using the metaphor of a shepherd, he writes that sheep sometimes are led through scary places, but with the shepherd, they still find comfort and sustenance at different points along the way. The poem describes the inevitable dilemma of the human soul – the quest for peace in a perilous place.
Human companions help children find that place of peace by providing children a safe place in which to consider their grief, and horses can too. The very presence of horses projects an image of power and peacefulness at the same time, embodying the definition of meekness – power under restraint. Children can sense the power and the safety in ways that attract them to the horse, while the horse fills their imagination with the solutions to an otherwise unmanageable disturbance of the soul. By simply being there, the horse becomes a living presence that allows them to transcend their circumstance, and discover how to bear it at the same time.
When children grieve, their journey can be described from the viewpoint of the sheep in the Psalm. Life doesn’t stop, and yet the way into the future can seem perilous. Things may not seem so bad for a while. Then, suddenly, they can be ambushed by unfamiliar, disquieting feelings, triggered by circumstances, questions, or even memories. Along the way, guidance and comforting at the hand of someone stronger and wiser would be welcomed. Horses can help provide that comfort and guidance, as grieving children discover how to navigate this unknown, dangerous territory more safely.
The journey is not linear, but cyclical, with waves of intense feelings ranging from anguish to deep sorrow to terror threatening every step. These powerful waves of emotion can seem perilous to a child, so they need a way to escape them until they learn how to manage them. Children may want to talk about the one who died for a brief time; they may cry or show frustration or anger as feelings come to the surface, then suddenly return to the green pastures of play as if nothing ever happened. Play and fantasy gives children a safe way to manage intense emotions without feeling swept under by them, and they can do it without adult language or expectations. They escape to a place of safety for a short while, remaining keenly aware that the peril still exists.
In one of my summer sessions, one little girl about six years old was paired with a very large, black gelding, standing over 16 hands (64 inches), and weighing over 1200 pounds. He was imposing to me, an experienced horse handler, but for that little girl, whose world suddenly had been torn apart when her older brother died at home, that big horse was “handsome”, and she poured herself into him in ways that reminded me of characters in a fairy tale. Her gaze, her touch, and her movement around him revealed that she had been transported to another world. I virtually expected that the horse would turn and speak some words of wisdom to her, or produce Pegasus wings and sweep her away into the sky. Well, he did speak, but not verbally, and he did sweep her away. In that fantasy place where little girls need to go to try to sort out the crazy things that happen in the real world, that horse spoke safety, peace, and comfort to a troubled heart, and she accepted it unconditionally. He could have frightened her, and made the world seem more unsafe. Instead, he swept her away, to a world in which that was impossible. As he accepted the gentle touch of her tiny fingertips, the anxiety that was often present in her in any other setting was nowhere to be found. He comforted her.
As children work through the emotional cycles of their grief, horses can provide a kind of oasis – a resting place – where they can turn for momentary relief from the intense feelings, in much the same way as when children turn to play for relief. However, this oasis is not a place, but a living being, connecting them to life, and accompanying them as they explore their changed lives. As they work through the cycles of the grieving process, children can turn from their intense work and focus their attention on the horse from time to time, allowing them to find rest from the journey, food for the soul, and strength to go on.
Whether actively mourning, or simply sitting still and pondering their grief, horses can play a major role in the healing processes of children. When adults don’t have the right words, or when children can’t talk about it because it’s just too hard, the silent companionship of a horse may be just what they need. I have never known a better comforter for my own grief or a better partner-companion when I am helping grieving children.
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Acknowledging Life
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When we support the mourning process of one who is bereaved, we are not dwelling on the death, but instead we are acknowledging life. If you acknowledge the life of one who has died, surviving family members may remember you as one of few people who actually helped in their time of bereavement. It sounds too simple, but it is true. How often do well-meaning friends try to keep our minds off the one who died, failing even to speak their name, in an attempt to protect us from the pain of our grief?
If life of someone special has just been snatched away from you, that person’s life is still very much on your mind, even though the fact of the death may have overtaken your life. In fact, you may be using all your energy just to try and grasp the fact that the life has indeed ended. Acknowledging the life of the deceased can help us begin to understand that they are gone, and that we must begin to adjust to that reality.
But we also need to acknowledge the lives of the surviving loved ones. Sometimes the event of the death comes upon a family like a whirlwind. Attending to the death and the flurry of activity that it sets into motion can cause a family to lose sight of the living. Children may be forgotten altogether as adults fail to recognize the needs of grieving children. I nstead of acknowledging the pain of the loss, family members sometimes speak of being strong for each other and fail to share in the most powerful emotional experience that we will have as families.
To acknowledge the lives of those who remain after a loved one dies is to acknowledge the needs of those who mourn. We are all different in how we fill those needs, and yet we are all the same in that our healing is helped along by those around us acknowledging that a living, breathing person has entered into a powerful season that we sometimes call the season of grief. We feel the pain and sorrow because we are alive. When others acknowledge that, they honor both the life of the deceased and our need to mourn.
Acknowledgement of the living is especially important for children. They learn how to balance the frightening paradox that life ends and life goes on at the same time. Focusing attention on the living while acknowledging the death can ease their anxieties about what will happen to them or other loved ones after someone important dies.
We acknowledge the sacred struggle that goes on in a soul trying to adjust to the absence of a loved one. Those who mourn need our care and compassion as the soul protests the emptiness that it somehow knows that it cannot fill. Encourage someone you know who is mourning to share their story with you. When you do, you will be offering them the gift of acknowledging life.
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This Holiday Season, Step Carefully Through the Step-parenting Minefield!
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Whether your family is blended or not, someone close to you probably has had to restructure their family due to divorce and remarriage, or some other cause.
Living in a blended family can be like navigating a minefield, especially during the holidays.
Children and teenagers might act out more than usual as the holidays approach, as they struggle to reconcile feelings of loss while wrestling with understanding their role in the new family.
At a time when adults are trying their best to let their kids know that they want the best for them, don’t be surprised if they behave in ways that the adults don’t quite understand.
Adult caregivers can avoid potential problems by remembering a couple of important truths.
• Kids need the right to protest. After all, they usually don’t make the decisions to end a marriage or to start a new family. Their nuclear family is the place that gives them their sense of safety and meaning in the world. When it is altered or upset, it may take a while for them to realize that the world can truly be a safe place again. If they question or protest, they simply need to be reassured that you hear their concerns and are determined to meet their needs. Sometimes they just need the opportunity to grieve their loss.
• Kids are resilient. They can adapt to almost anything, if given choices. Offer them healthy choices, like including them in planning family activities, or letting them decide whom they will spend time with, or observing a special tradition that was observed in the “old” family.
• Addition works better than subtraction. It is helpful to reassure kids that they still have old family ties, and that their new family is eager to include them. The change won’t mean the same to kids as adults. Don’t try to force them to accept new realities. They do that better when they have been allowed to grieve their loss. Ritual and routine give kids a sense of security. And, be careful not to send the message that something new is being “substituted” for something they cherish. They can handle addition, but not substitution or subtraction.
It may be easier than it seems to set aside adult conflicts for the sake of the child. It is not necessary to lie about what may have happened, just be careful not to inadvertently place them in the middle of disputes, or otherwise convince them that they can never again be emotionally safe with the most important people in their lives. It’s hard enough for them to make sense of the choices adults sometimes make anyway. Be careful not to add to their distress by forcing them to try to take care of or mediate between able-bodied adults. It’s too big of a job for a kid.
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Remembrance
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“I remember…” Memory is a powerful thing. We carry it in many parts of us – our thoughts, our senses, our emotions.
Melinda Worth Popham wrote: “I don't avoid pain by not remembering something; I try to remember. Memory is empowering, and it's what gives you your sense of continuity in the world.”
Remembrance is not just the things that go through our minds. It also involves doing things that will result in holding on to the memory of the person who died in a special way.
Remembrance can be a formal ritual, or it can be spontaneous and intimate. Acts of remembrance help us discover new ways to keep the reality of our loved one alive in a way that we can use our five senses to engage. This book is a remembrance for me, as it is intended to help me keep the stories and the sensations of my loved ones fresh in my experience, in a form that I can hand down to my children and their children. Your remembrances may involve music, art, stories, favorite activities, formal rituals, or anything that fits within your culture and the life of the one who died.
The death of someone we love creates a powerful paradox in which life co-exists with the knowledge of death. Remembrance honors that space in which all survivors ultimately must stand: Suspended between life and death, preparing themselves for the inevitable release of the pain and sorrow caused by the ending of a life, while embracing the memories, treasuring the knowledge that they have grieved because they have loved.
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Minding My Own Grief
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I have spent years comforting people who are grieving the death of a loved one. Now it is my turn to look at grieving from the inside out.
Thursday, November 3, 2005, my mother died. On the surface, you might think that I would have been prepared for that day. After all, I help grieving people for a living, and my dad died just six years ago. My mother had Alzheimer’s disease, and had been in decline for the past two years. I even got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when my sister’s email said that my mother had gone to the hospital again, thinking this might be the last time. Why shouldn’t the event be easy?
Well, I wasn’t prepared for what followed. You see, when your last parent dies, when the stress of trying to care for her has made her kids a little crazy for a few years, when she can no longer acknowledge her son, but can only slump in her chair, roll her eyes away, then close them as she buries her face in her hand, you know that she has already left you, even though she is still around. Deep down inside, Marie’s little boy had known for a while that it would be hard losing his mama this way, and that he probably wouldn’t like it one bit. Under the circumstances, hoping for a smooth transition was just plain old wishful thinking.
Living two states away, I loved and hated that I could not be the one nearby, to run to my frail mother’s side to protect her from stuff that other old people have to endure. Worn down by years of cringing each time she made the trip from the nursing home to the hospital, I think I tried to numb myself, maybe insulate myself, from the foreboding of the coming end that so haunted me each time I made the long drive that ended with that dreaded, predictable reception. But even numbness couldn’t save me.
The haunting finally became reality, as the end came too soon, even after ninety years of life. And, it didn’t release me from the tension that had been building since the day my dad died, and the dementia that those two old folks had so masterfully hidden from their adult children for years was finally exposed. Never mind my denial – I steadfastly maintain that they were masters of deception.
But this story is not about dementia. This is just a story about some things I noticed as I went about the business of minding my own grief for a change.
First of all, grief brings stress. I didn’t notice it at first, in fact never really noticed it at all before. Perhaps the events leading up to my mom’s death taught me how to stress, instead of teaching me how to mourn. You see, I think the stress got in the way of my mourning. But this is not the stress of a schoolteacher’s kid trying to get his homework right. This stress wells up from within, first diverting your focus away from anything you want it on, then surreptitiously sucking away bits of energy until one day you try to stand up, and you feel a bit faint for no apparent reason; your digestive system tightens from the esophagus to – well, you get the picture - and your head inflates with hot air or something, making it feel heavy when you think it should be floating.
I can’t help but notice that if you take away the trauma-specific elements needed to diagnose Acute Stress or Post Traumatic Stress, we grieving people sometimes function in much the same way as people who have been exposed to trauma. Maybe we should not be so surprised that human beings, reacting to an abrupt change of their world, show symptoms of inability to eat or sleep, loss of concentration and memory, numbness, and the like, whether the event was traumatic or not. And, since so much of the results of stress can be felt in the body, it makes sense that some cultures in the past have allowed, even mandated, that the mourner stop doing whatever he or she is doing, and mourn the loss for a season, unlike the “get-back-to-normal” mindset of modern western society. They must have known that, when someone dies, our ability to produce anything healthy from our bodies and minds is severely impaired for a while, so there’s no sense fighting it. Heck, I didn’t need any darned old trauma to make me feel and act that way. My mom’s death was quite enough, thank you.
Here is something else I noticed when my mom died: The very fact that my life changed forever was quite enough to cause me stress. Yes, my heart rate reflected the upheavals within my soul, my mind produced dribble, and my body quaked, but it was my changed situation that rushed to the forefront of my mind the moment I heard that my mom had died, and preoccupied my thoughts for weeks: My mom is gone; I have no parents. I have thought about it a lot, and can tell you a couple of reasons why I think this was so big of a deal:
• Sudden disconnect. There’s just no comfortable way to be separated permanently from your mother. Even at ninety years of age, I still grimace every time I am asked, “Was it expected?” The moment that two souls become disconnected is always sudden, and shocking. That’s stressful.
• Loss of ritual. My parents were the standard bearers of ritual in my family that the collective might of all five of their kids can’t possibly reconstruct, no matter how hard we try. Where the heck were we when they passed around the rulebook? Doesn’t anyone realize that no one will EVER get the rituals right without my parents? Sitting in the church, strains of that beautiful, old, all-but-forgotten music washing over me, much of it from the days of slavery, I knew that one of the last keepers of the rituals that shaped me lay still in the front of that little room, and within minutes would carry my part in those rituals to her grave, never to be retrieved. Stressful!
• Alzheimers. The change started when I began noticing symptoms of this disease. First the insult of having a mother who could no longer be my mother, then her death. Watching her waste away for years brought the stress of knowing that she was leaving; I just didn’t find a way to resolve that stress before she was gone.
I was once asked, “Who comforts you when you hurt?” I couldn’t answer on that day, but I was determined that I would have an answer if ever asked again. I feel like the Psalm writer, crying out not to be left alone in that lonely and desolate place that overtakes the soul when a loved one dies. In the past, I admit that I just longed for the God of the Psalmist somehow to magically take away my pain. Lately I am beginning to understand that His comfort comes to me through those around me. Now, I both see and feel the presence of my comforters.
Of course, my wife and my children are the first I see. I notice them more now than ever before, and place no demands on them except that they “are with me”, kind of like the Shepherd was with the Psalmist. But now I also see clearly what I instinctively knew as a young boy when my grandmother died, the first death that brought with it the deep pain that you feel when someone you love dies. Today, I can see that my horses, too, had been my comforters, a fact that I almost missed. You see, the fields and woodlands surrounding my grandmother’s house were also the home for my horses. There, in that sacred place, I romped and hung out with them, and generally basked in my grandmother’s memory, accompanied by my best friends, my silent companions. Little did I know that they were healing the pain of the loss every day that we retraced together all the paths that I had once explored with Granny, while her healing memory deepened its place in my soul. We didn’t need to talk about it; we just needed to be there together. Funny. The stuff that I help people do today – giving yourself the time and space you need to heal, letting the memories take root in your soul, and such – my horses were with me when I began to learn.
My healing companion today is Starlite, an eight-year-old sorrel Quarter Horse gelding. He only came into my life in August, but from the start I knew that we each had need of the other. He needed a job and a purpose, and I would soon need a refuge from my pain. When I am with him, my body and my brain don’t feel the stress so much. And, maybe my heart doesn’t feel the pain so much. When we are together, he gets to work hard, I get to show him how much I appreciate it, and he seems genuinely glad that we are together, work and all.
In a world that will no longer be the same because my mom is no longer in it, for a few hours at a time, he reminds me that I can be OK in this world again. It won’t all happen at once, but it’s good to be reminded that it will be OK again – someday. For now, Kathy, Kimberly, Amber – and Starlite – comfort me. That’s good enough.
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Our Kids Could Use Our Help
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During the past week, counselors have been at work trying to help students at Platte Valley High School find some semblance of normalcy. Whatever you think of crisis counseling, dubbed “grief counseling” by the media, many believe that intervening at such times might reduce the risk of problems for some kids later on, and that makes it worth the effort. Still, it pays to remember that, whenever children have friends or family members die, they could use the support of caring adults long after the crisis has passed.
I am thankful for crisis teams who can help kids process the shock and horror of an event like a school shooting. (Remember when that wasn’t a household term?) But, what about later, after all the public attention is gone, when kids return to their normal lives and have to face special days without the ones who died, moving toward adulthood, carrying that awful memory that robbed them of the innocence of childhood? Or what of the children in other schools? Some try not to think about it. Others have a hard time believing that it won’t happen in their school, too.
There are some results of tragedy that will remain with children long after the crisis team has closed shop. Kids of all ages have their image of the world in which they live shattered, and struggle to put it back together again. Adults can’t speak a language that makes sense to younger kids, so they avoid talking to us. And, try as we may, adults find it hard to convince teens to “talk it out” like we would do. They would rather hang with their peers, where they can talk as little or as much as they need without demonstrating to us how they feel. Truth is, we will never be able to share the perspective of a child when tragedy strikes, unless we have been through something similar. And, even then, each experience is unique. And the world of the child is much smaller than ours, so their perspective can be hard for us to relate to.
Children deserve the right to work through their losses with those who share their perspective on things, but that doesn’t mean that adults are entirely helpless to do anything for them. Compassionate support, coupled with educating ourselves and our kids about the normal, natural ways we respond to loss and prepare for life after the loss, can make a difference in how young people approach the future. They will inherit the long-term task of defining policies, developing new practices, and creating new technology that will help the world address such problems in the future. For now, helping them to heal as well as possible is the greatest gift adults in their lives can offer them.
Unfortunately, recent events have shown us that we can’t protect our kids from the pain of loss. But we can be a listening ear, a supportive presence, a friend who just wants them to know that they won’t be forgotten after the dust has settled and everyone seems to have returned to their normal lives. They know all too well that their “normal” has been changed forever. I hope that we adults can find the courage and patience somehow to show our kids that we won’t leave their sides, no matter how long it takes for them to discover what that new “normal” will be.
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When Your Pet Dies
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Scarcely twelve hours after visiting relatives left for home after the holidays, my daughter’s panicked cry from the basement told me that something was desperately wrong. Cooper, our six-year-old English Springer Spaniel, barely able to stand, was panting in pain at the bottom of the stairs. We took him to a nearby clinic the next morning, avoiding a drive across town to his regular vet in four feet of snow. The diagnosis was Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia. The consultation left us puzzled. The doctors deflected my questions about euthanasia. Six weeks of around-the-clock nursing, special diets, lesions, and incontinence said that he was not getting better. Reluctantly leaving him at a special kennel when we had travel to a funeral, we returned to find him in distress. The clinic that had been treating him would not see him. I dropped him off at his regular vet, and he lay down and died a couple of hours later. The second clinic didn’t have special facilities for grieving pet owners, but they showed the utmost kindness and compassion in everything they said and did. I think kindly of them when I think of Cooper’s death. I don’t think kindly of the first.
Before Cooper’s death, I had focused exclusively on the needs of humans who grieve other humans. Pet owners may have been overlooked by the medical profession, but veterinary medicine is doing all it can to make sure that we remember them. My awareness began with a conversation I overhead between two women in a downtown Denver bistro a few years ago, never thinking it would apply to me. The discussion was unlike anything I had imagined growing up in rural southeastern Oklahoma. They talked about their dogs, but were they describing euthanasia or hospice care? It was hard to tell from what they said. Each spoke in turn of the death of their beloved family pet, describing in detail how the medical staff had prepared them for the event, how the whole family took part in every decision, of their plans for remains and memorializing, and how they could not have imagined doing it any other way. They seemed very much at peace. The service they received was new to me, but in no way unique. In fact, it was readily available when asked for, and more and more pet owners today are asking for it. Unfortunately, no one recommended it when Cooper died.
Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, one of about thirty doctors at the Alameda East Veterinary Hospital in Denver, attends four hundred deaths a year. He says he is amazed at the changes he has seen in how families respond to the death of their pets in his twenty-five years of practice, simply noting that “it is not the same world.” More humans today grieve for their pets as they would grieve the death of a human loved one, perhaps because our pets have become more family member than companion and helper. No one knows for sure, but the grief responses are as varied and can be as intense as in human death, and sometimes they require real attention. Alameda East relies on professional mental health workers for training and guidance when helping their grieving clients. But the need does not stop there. They also recognize the effect of pet death on veterinary medical doctors and staff, and are just as determined that they receive the support they need to get through the emotional challenges they face.
Pet hospice has emerged as a popular end of life choice for families when a pet dies. Encouraged by the American Veterinary Medical Association, its guidelines for practice include a recommendation that the care team be prepared to make competent referrals to licensed mental health professionals with training and experience in grief and bereavement. Local veterinary hospitals report that they consult bereavement counselors when needed. The Center for Animal Wellness in Denver designed its new hospital with an area dedicated to end of life counseling, euthanasia, and bereavement support. Pet bereavement support groups grow more common every year.
Supporting the needs of bereaved pet owners is becoming an integral part of veterinary medical training today. In Colorado, the Argus Institute for families and Veterinary Medicine employs a full time team of professional mental health and bereavement workers to work alongside student doctors at the Colorado State University’s veterinary teaching hospital, teaching communication and empathy skills, and modeling how to slow the process down and take the time to find out what works for every family. Self-care and colleague-care are central to their training. The Institute’s website, www.argusinstitute.colostate.edu, is a resource treasure for bereaved Colorado pet owners. At the University of Tennessee, the schools of social work and veterinary medicine collaborated to create a field placement for social work interns in the veterinary teaching hospital. Social workers attend to the needs of families, animals, and medical staff. Motivated to respond to the growing role of our animals in our lives, their eventual goal is to have these social workers placed in veterinary practices around the country, and to prepare social workers to recognize and serve the needs of grieving pet owners.
Death follows life. When our pets die, the adjustment to life without them can be as difficult as when a human loved one dies. Pet owners may need the same kind of emotional support when pets die as when humans die. A phone call or an internet query to find pet loss resources could yield much more information than you might think. It did for me. If faced with the death of your pet, you may be able to find the resource you need, too. It is worth a try.
Many of the caring veterinary professionals I have talked to suggest that veterinary medicine lags behind human medicine when it comes to end of life care and supporting the bereaved. Maybe - but they are narrowing the gap.
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Equine Assisted Psychotherapy Replaces Conventional Therapy
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Therapists and counselors now have a way to do counseling that looks nothing like the old therapy couch of bygone days. Equine Assisted Psychotherapy or Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy is real therapy, but with a couple of important and very noticeable differences. First of all, equine assisted therapists usually work in a team consisting of therapist and horse professional. The next most noticeable thing is that the therapeutic team is completed by horses. And, of course, they can’t come to the office, so the therapy session is moved to the farm, usually taking place in an arena or other area large enough and safe enough for horse activity.
In this horse-human team, horses take on a role in activities, or simply offer comfort and companionship as human clients explore coping skills, decision-making skills, creative problem-solving skills, and meanings of body language and nonverbal communication. For the bereaved, their peaceful presence and warm, fuzzy bodies also provide a tactile stimulus that calms while releasing good feelings. Horses serve as silent partners to the therapeutic process, providing clients a safe place to face and work through their emotions.
In Horses Healing Grief, children and caregivers spend a half-day in the quiet comfort of a working horse farm with other families who have had a loved one die. Through stimulating activities with horses and other humans, horses comfort and help children and adults understand life after a loss.
The rationale behind the work is that the experiential process – learning by doing - allows the client to explore his or her inner world while the horse makes it easier and more comfortable to manage feelings or thoughts that might otherwise seem too hard to bear. In this way, learners can challenge themselves about needed change applying new skills, but they don’t have to take the risk of judgment or criticism that sometimes inhibits positive change. The horse becomes a bridge that connects the client to their problem in the here and now, and prepares them for how to face it in the future. As a result, change takes place more quickly, and often the impact of counseling is greater than with traditional talk therapy, because their experience becomes the teacher.
Losses early in life often shape the balance of a child’s life. The primary goal of our equine assisted work with foster kids, attachment disordered, traumatized, and/or grieving kids is to heal early life trauma, giving them a better chance for emotional health later on.
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Horses Healing Grief
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Horses Healing Grief
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