Losing a horse is never easy, but these comforting words can sometimes help.
Horses teach us, lift us up, give us confidence and help us achieve our dreams. They become our best friends. They give us their hearts and in turn, we give them ours. In fact, the only truly bad part of owning and loving a horse is when you have to say goodbye to one.
Whether you have had to say goodbye to a beloved horse yourself and are trying to find ways to deal with the pain, or are looking for comforting words to help a friend going through this difficult time, here are some of the most helpful quotes for horse lovers to hear.
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved
within your heart,
and try to love the questions themselves.
Do not seek the answers which cannot
Now be given to you
Because you would not be able to live them,
And the point is - to live everything.
So live the questions now.
And perhaps you will gradually,
Without noticing it,
Live along some distant day, into the answer."
- Ranier Maria Rilke
When going through any painful situation, it is far too easy to get stuck on the question "why." But this quote advises readers to look at those questions a little differently.
"If there is a heaven, it's certain our animals are to be there. Their lives become so interwoven with our own, it would take more than an archangel to detangle them." - Pam Brown
For most owners, one of the biggest worries about losing a horse is the finality of the goodbye. But this quote assures us that that the goodbye isn't final at all.
"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, Blackwater Woods
Letting go is hard in any situation, but particularly hard when it comes to a horse you love. But this quote reminds us that it is part of living, and that there is even a beauty in being able to love what you know you will one day lose.
"We who choose to surround ourselves with lives more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan. The life of a horse, often half our own, seems endless until one day. That day has come and gone for me, and I am once again within a somewhat smaller circle." - Irving Townsend "The Once Again Prince"
This quote reminds us that the pain we are going through is of our own making. Aware the ephemeral life of a horse, horse people choose this life anyway, and somehow knowing that helps.
"Somewhere...somewhere in time's own space
There must be some sweet pastured place
Where creeks sing on and tall trees grow
Some Paradise where horses go.
For by the love that guides my pen
I know great horses live again."
- Stanley Harrison
The beauty of this quote is that, while it doesn't allude to any specific afterlife, it explains what those who have truly loved a great horse (and aren't all horses great?) will understand: for a horse like that, there is no way that this life is "it."
Don't cry for the horses
That life has set free
A million white horses
Forever to be
Don't cry for the horses
Now in God's hands
As they dance and they prance
To a heavenly band
They were ours to borrow
But never to keep
As they close their eyes
Forever to sleep
Spirits unbound
On silver wings they fly
A million white horses
Against the blue sky
Look up into heaven
You'll see them above
The horses we lost
The horses we loved
Manes and tails flowing
They gallop through time
They were never yours
They were never mine
Don't cry for the horses
They will be back someday
When our time comes
They will show us the way
Do you hear that soft nicker
Close to your ear?
Don't cry for the horses
Love the ones that are here.
-Brenda Riley-Seymore
When you're mourning one horse, knowing there others out at the barn waiting not-so-patiently for their dinner can actually help more than anything else. Even if at first you're just going through the motions, science has proven that if you smile long enough, before long you being to actually feel happy. And as this poem suggests, if you start forcing your body to go through the motions, eventually your heart will join you there.
If you have had to say goodbye to a special equine friend, hold these comforting quotes close to your heart. There are few words that hold more truth.
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