An absent friend

Things change quickly and a whole lot of them have changed over the last year.

I still miss Othello deeply and I suppose that I always will but the lessons he taught me and the direction he gave me are things I use every day, very much alive and at the foundation of the person I am and the person I will be.

I still choke up when I think back to that night- curled up on the bed in a stinking Canadian hotel room, ugly with tears and wracked with grief, trying to somehow reach out across the thousands of miles between us and beg my pony not to die while sleepsy_mouse held things together and stayed in touch with our friend who was looking after him and with the vet, a job I don't think I would have been capable of at the time.

Things change quickly with a crisis like that to trigger them and a big part of his legacy was my realisation that I belong to horses now and that the music that had been such a massive part of my life for so long was going to have to step aside and let them take centre stage. That change is still gaining momentum as I start grow into my riding and my horsemanship, and I honestly don't know where it will take us or how, but already the journey has been a tremendous adventure. Of course, I wish he could have been able to stay around for longer so we could have enjoyed a little more travelling together but that choice wasn't mine to make. Instead I have become more conscious of the choices I do have and tried to do everything I can to make the best of them while they are available to me.