“You’ll know.”
Grief is such a strange thing.
The day it begins is a blanket of “out of sorts”. We know what it is and we know what is going on, but in the moment our brain is just foggy and unable to form coherent thoughts.
It’s not the day of, or the next week. I am talking about the way it just hits, right when we least expect it.
My horse Sunny Boy was 38. He will forever be 38.
Sunny Boy was a beautiful palomino Tennessee Walking Horse. I don’t have many memories of before Sunny Boy, but my happiest memories formed after Sunny Boy. I had a wild spirited pony named Scout, and my parents were concerned Scout just wasn’t cut out to be a kid’s horse. He tended to buck, bite, and was aggressive toward other horses. Don’t worry, they didn’t listen when I said “I can fix him” at the baby age of seven. They went to the auction, and brought home the massive 15 hand TWH. He was big, stunning, and had the best mane for braiding. However, I was hellbent on keeping my pony Scout, but they convinced me to take some riding lessons. I had the raw talent of “lacks fear” so I climbed on Sunny, and had a private lesson with a trainer from the down the street.
I was hooked that day. I never wanted to stop riding. My heart belonged to Sunny Boy.
That was 26 years ago.
Last spring (2026) my vet and I analyzed Sunny Boy by weight, teeth longevity and overall function. “Happiness” if you want to call it that. Horses don’t have the ability to tell us they don’t feel good or their time is almost up. In the wild, old horses (if they make it to that) typically wander from the group, and lay down somewhere. Most of the time their hearts give up or they starve. The circle of life happens. It’s brutally beautiful. In captivity, as owners, we have to monitor them closely to know when its time, because sometimes nature is ugly and full of suffering. I don’t want that for my horses, or anyone’s horses. I wanted that peaceful sleep for Sunny Boy, especially after all that he did for me.
My vet kept saying “you’ll know”. I didn’t believe him, until one day, I did. I didn’t question it, I didn’t have an ounce of hesitation in my heart. I braided his mane one last time, I cut a chunk out of his tail (see here for more on this topic), and put a painted handprint on his shoulder by his heart so that he could take a piece of me with him to Heaven. Sunny was tired. In human years he was nearly 110 years old. His body was heavy, exhausted, and he couldn’t eat anymore. His heart was broken, along with his failing body. Just a month prior he was galloping in his favorite field on last time.
Sunny Boy was 38 when he passed onto greener fields on August 14th. Just weeks before my birthday. We had been together for almost 27 years.
I was at peace with it.
Until I had to move barns. Sunny is buried where I can’t take him and it hit me that I can’t take him with me. Do I believe he is still with me? Sure. But leaving his burial mound was the hardest hit of grief I have ever experienced. I took time, I was busy, but grief is so strange. One day, I’ll be feeding my other horses, and just break down. I can still hear his nicker and smell him. I’m fine, until I’m not. It’s like a punch of air through the chest cavity. It’s like suddenly realizing you were forgetting something, only to realize a beat later that he isn’t there.
They are not just pets. They are family and soulmates. Grief hits us all so differently and in different stages. According to research the stages are not a tier we climb to get better, it is a circle that may dip or reverse at any moment. Like a bad tilt-a-whirl at the cheapest fair. It spins, stops, slows, and spins again.
It never goes away. It sits in the back of our minds and hearts, and clicks like a clock. Constantly reminding us that it’s there, we just got used to hearing it tick until the alarm goes off again.
Grief is so strange, but life keeps moving. Thats the hardest part.
While I work, ride, read, write, and be with my other animals, Sunny Boy is galloping across greener fields. Someday, he will be at the gate, waiting for me to ride again.
