Friendly Therapy

I wasn't going to go to my riding lesson today, but then changed my mind, thinking Friendly the elderly horse was exactly what I needed and it did help for awhile.  I love the farm.  The house is surrounded by fields of horses and as soon as I get there, a few members of the canine greeting committee show up to welcome me.  In the stable where we saddle up, it is not at all unusual for a cat or kitten to make his or her presence known as well.  Add to that the fact that it is spring, and the snorts and whinnies of bothered stallions fills the room.  The place isn't fancy; it's homey and I like it.

I have my e-ticket and will leave for England Sunday evening, returning next Saturday with The Brit.  Tonight, I am completely alone for the first time since Daphne's passing as the kids are with grandma for two nights.  I'm not sure if being alone is a good thing or not.  My original intent was to just relax as I'm either not sleeping well or not sleeping long, depending on what night it is, so I am still feeling rather exhausted.  But since the kids left, I have found myself constantly in motion, needing to do things. I went Easter shopping for the kids as well as picked up some food staples they would need for next week.  I came home and put everything away, cleaned up my suitcase (it had been lying in the closet and Alex the cat had apparently been using it for a bed), selected my outfit for the funeral and packed it, vacuumed (imagine that), cleaned the bathroom and then put the Easter baskets together.  Now I just need to find a place to hide them until Saturday night.

Then even when I sat down to blog this, I got the first two paragraphs finished and Robyn stopped over and went to run more errands with me.  I am incredibly tired but am having great difficulty stopping.  I guess it is helping to keep my mind occupied.

I still am having very intense moments where I am very much struggling with this whole situation.  Maybe it because I'm here, and in a normal circumstance, my in-laws would not generally be here, other than for a visit maybe once a year, so there is nothing here that is different.  Being over there is going to help me accept it; to wrap my head around it as I'm having so much trouble.  Yes, I know that death is very normal and I have mentioned before that I lost my own father to cancer.  But we had two years to get used to the idea.  We knew were in a holding pattern with him. 

With Daphne, it happened so fast and so suddenly, my head doesn't want to accept the reality.  Over in England, they have no choice.  They are there.  She isn't.  As much as I don't want it, I need the closure on this as much as I need to be close to those over there I love.  It's hard grieving and supporting from 3000 miles away.

I remembered something today that a very wise man once told me.  Pastor Phil and I were talking about death once during the time he was our interim pastor and he explained it in a way that made so much sense to me.  Death is much like birth.  We don't remember being in the womb, yet we were there.  It was a part of our life in another place before we passed into our life here on earth.  Death is much the same.  We move from this place, much as we moved out of our mother's womb, into the next part of the journey.  It's not over.  We're still here, only in another place.

There is comfort in knowing that.