I didn't touch the ground, but I touched the wall there and I just I talked to him for a few minutes. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.

Today I'm going to talk about closure again, it seems that there's many layers to closure and when I talk about closure, I'm talking about grief. Is that a surprise? Yes, grief, closure. So if you've been listening lately, you know that I've been going through helping my friend, or my well, she was originally my friend's sister, now she's my friend because her mother, who is also my friend, passed away at the end of June. And I've been going through that helping her, being there, supporting her in her decision-making and dealing with my own grief and sense of loss. And that's one thing, and that's just something that goes along with life, especially as you start to get older, I found. But what I'm talking about today is closure.

Again another layer with the loss of my horse, Dallas. He passed away last March, so a year ago, march, almost a year and a half ago and during that time now don't judge me During that time we had kept his stall. Um, just because we weren't sure in the beginning what we were going to do, did we want to buy another horse? I mean, everything changed so abruptly, so quickly he passed away. We didn't have any warning. My whole horse hobby life, leisure life, changed dramatically. I was there every day, almost every day. Everything changed. So in the beginning we didn't want to make any rash decisions. We had a good stall, so we paid a portion of the full board to keep it.

And I'll admit, when I talk about grief and when I talk to other people about grief, I, for the most part, have managed to work through a lot of grief successfully. I would say. You know, I've lost a lot of animals. Then there's my parents, of course, my dad, my mom, my best friend, close friends that I've known at the barn. A lot of people passed away who were our friends, people that surprised us, people that I worked with my boss at one point. So I think that I've successfully navigated that, but I'm here to tell you that the loss of my horse, having him for 23 years, was super painful and it was something that I've really had a hard time facing and dealing with and working through. It's just too painful, just too painful.

But there comes a time when you realize that you need to move on, for whatever reason, and there are several reasons why financial, emotional, just logistically. Financial emotional, just logistically. And I made the decision to give up the stall recently, which I'd been thinking about a lot, and so the other night we went to go clean out some of the items in the locker that we had, and I knew that it wasn't going to be something that we wouldn't be able to get through in one swoop. I'd only been there once since Dallas passed away and I wasn't really sure how this was going to go and I wasn't really sure how this was going to go. It was. It was, in some ways it was easier than I thought and in some ways it was harder. It's uncomfortable, it's something that I guess I wish I didn't have to go through, period, but I'm going to do it.

We got through the first half. There's a lot of. There's a lot of dust in there. I mean a lot of dust because even though the locker was closed, locked up, all this time, there's little you know slits in the door, it's not an airtight seal or anything, and so there's just a lot of dust in a barn, let's face it. And so there's a lot of dust. There's a lot of cobwebs, a lot of spiders, probably.

We went at night so that we wouldn't run into anyone. We went late, so I gave Bubby, our cat, his medicine and then we left, got over there, and then we had to come back for his insulin shot. We only saw one friend who was there. So that was, I mean, as painless as it's going to be. I did get to touch my friend's horse's nose, which, if you've never touched a horse's nose, it's such a soft, sweet thing I don't know how to explain it If you haven't done it. It's like a big finger or something, and they kind of reach out and they nuzzle you with it. It's very soft, it's very kind of squishy the skin is, and it's just a really nice feeling to feel that way.

But is it something that I want to get back into? I guess not. It's just so it's so weird to pull away from that, because it was such a big part of my life for 25 years and before we had Dallas, you know, I took lessons and I was there at the barn a lot and I made a lot of friends and it was our life, it was the focus. He had this gift with horses and something that he would never have known about before. Right Before me, before the barn, I was always encouraging him to go and he was always like, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, and then he went and he really got wrapped up in it and he ended up working there.

But that's in the past, but it was hard and Bill was talking to our friend and he got in the car and then I went over around the corner to the place, the spot where Dallas died, and I took a moment and I, you know, I didn't touch the ground, but I touched the wall there and I just I talked to him for a few minutes, talked to him for a minute. I don't know what I said and I I came back and I got in the car and I, when I used to leave, I used to look at him in the stall and I would say good night, dallas, I love you. And so I said that and um, we drove away and and Bill said he was really proud of me and that was it. That was all I needed just to start bawling. Um, that was it, that was all I needed, yeah, so we're going to go back in another week and try to get the rest of the stuff.

There are some things that were not in the locker, that aren't there anymore, and, yeah, we have some of his things. We have a saddle, we have his bridle, we have his brushes, but in the end we don't have him, and so there's just a lot of loss, right, and that's what it is. So, for anybody that's grieving a loss or have grieved a loss or is going to grieve a loss, you just got to hang in there and you got to say you know you got to power through it right One way or the other. So I've been easy on myself today, and that would be my, that's my advice to anybody that's grieving a loss is be easy on yourself. So next week we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me.

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