Losing Lilly + a life update

Life update: the last few weeks

A few weeks ago I started the week off with a Monday phone call from a girlfriend with some tragic news. Her news, not mine. I am happy that I am the friend people call. Being a good friend is one of my most important values, and like most, when my friends hurt, so do I. The week continued on and Thursday morning I received call #2 from friend #2… another traumatic tragedy had hit another one of my girls. The world felt heavy and hard as I moved through life that Thursday, which also happened to be my nana’s 70th birthday. I tried to be happy-go-lucky through the evening celebrations but in reality all I wanted to do was go home and pull the covers over my head. 

The next day (Friday) after ending the school day with a nice angry parent… I was looking so forward to just going home, enjoying my sleepover with the kids and watching the Oilers game with my mom once they were in bed. I was just getting the kids out of the bath when my mom messaged me to let me know that my dad had been rushed to the hospital.

My dad has been experiencing high blood pressure for many years and had a small but scary emergency. I will keep the details within our close friends and family but it was enough to give us a good scare. After I put the kids down, my girlfriend Bailey came and sat with me until almost 1:00am. I am so thankful for my people right now, all things considering.

There was a lot to process coming out of that week. I think hard times always will show us things that we are avoiding, or at times trying not to see. Following the emotions of that week I decided that it was time to end the relationship I had been in for the past few months. Not all relationships have to end badly, and this one didn’t. But as I learned a few lessons ago, some love’s just aren’t meant to last forever, and this was was not. 

I was barely recovered from the events of the week before when I recieved news of another tragedy. Heartbreaking news that affected someone else I love. They say bad things come in 3’s… now I was at 4? I was literally crying in the staff bathroom at work asking God why he lets bad things happened to good people… and that was before our province lit on fire… that came the next day. 

Like I am sure most of you, I started getting phone calls, paired with emergency alerts. Loved ones were evacuating, some lost their homes already, the phone was ringing off the hook, I was panic preparing the spare rooms and rushing to Costco to stock the fridge, checking in with everyone and offering my home. In the midst of all the chaos, I received the call from my dad about Lilly. 

As my parents were preparing to receive some evacuee livestock from High Prairie, my dad went out to move our horses and found Lilly down. He took her into the clinic and they gave her 4 rounds of IV antibiotics and hydration, and then he took her home. Stressed as I was, I knew my girl was a fighter. I was waiting at my friend Ali’s for updates from my friends in High Prairie. Dad called back around 10:00pm with the update that he was rushing Lilly to the clinic in Edmonton. 

I think there was a naïve part of me that expected Lilly to be around forever. She has been a part of my life since I was 10 years old. In many ways I don’t know life without her. She joined our family in 2010, Dad had gone to a bull sale at the Birch Hills Hutterite Colony and drove by 3 Hutterite children riding Lilly in the ditch with a halter… she was only 6, a unicorn she was. He brought her home with him.

If you knew Lilly, you knew she was literally the sweetest mare. When she came to our farm she was just looking for someone to love her. I fell in love with her instantly. How could I not? She was the sweetest soul. If you stopped petting her, she would smack you with her head. She was the cow-y-ist horse I have ever came across. Once we were chasing cows through the back pens at the farm and I got hung up on a gate corner and came off… she chased the cow to where it needed to be and then came back to where I was still laying on the ground. Another time on a cattle drive we got pinned between a bale stack and an angry bull… she kicked him in face and got us out of there.

She was quick. The only horse I could ever track down a yearling heifer on the run, out run the entire herd of cattle on their way to the left-open gate, and win the walk-trot-run at #Teepee100 by a landslide. She was right there beside me when I was crowned Miss Teepee Creek Stampede. Carrying me through my crowning lap, every grand entry and queen parade. Although scared of literally nothing else, she was terrified of fire works. I sat in her box stall with her every single night of the Dawson Creek Stampede during our queening year, no matter how early I had to be up or how exhausted I was… we were a team.

My competetive rodeo career came to an end following the end of my reign as Miss Teepee Creek Stampede. As I knew my life had a different calling. I sold my barrel horse, but Lilly was never going anywhere. The farm was her home. I was running around trying to find myself, but she was a constant at home waiting for me. Whether I needed a mental health ride, it was cattle drive time, the kids wanted a ride or I had friends visiting, Lilly was always there for me. When I came back to the farm following the end of my 5 year relationship, she met me at the gate. We saddled up and rode for hours while I just cried it all out.

It was hard to feel like all I wanted to do to manage the hurt was saddle up and get lost in the land… when the entire reason my heart was hurting to much was because I know that I won’t ever get to do that again.

I have seen a lot of hurt in my 23 years. But this one was unique. In the first few days of grieving, I learned the subtle difference between being “upset” and being “sad”. Lots of things in life upset you, but in this situation, I was just so fucking sad. I lost a 2o year old horse that I thought would live to be 30. I lost a life partner. I feel like a piece of my heart went with her. My heart, and the Foley Farm will never quite be the same. I honestly don’t think I have ever been this deeply, utterly sad. The last week has looked like a lot of laying in bed watching Grey’s Anatomy, and tears in the classroom when the kids go out for recess. Sometimes even the strongest of people feel weak. Sometimes there is nothing that you can be but sad. Sometimes that’s okay.

Lilly… my angel girl. Thank you for choosing me to be your person. I will always save my last ride for you.