The River
“Grief, too, is a river, traveling at its own unstoppable pace, to its own incoherent rhythms.”
I have been on a long, difficult, beautiful journey with my dog, Lorca, who was working with me on shifting my relationship to death.
In April 2021, Lorca let me know that he was readying himself for the transition process, and that he wanted help crossing over. I didn’t know if it would happen one week, two weeks, a month, or several months from that point. He left his physical body in November of the same year. His dying process ended up being eight months. (Though he had been working with me on shifting my understanding of death for two years).
When he told me he was ready, I panicked. I tried to control everything. Even though as an Animal Communicator, I had learned from so many animals that they choose how and when they die, and that their choice is often part of our soul lessons in this lifetime—I couldn’t help it; my mind spun in all directions out of desperation. If I learn my lessons better, faster, maybe I can extend the time? Or if I refuse the lessons, maybe he will stay longer to teach me? If I become a better person, if I fix this and that about myself, do this and that for him, maybe I can control when and how it happens? If I can just find the right actions to do or not do, then maybe he can stay.
But I also didn’t want him to suffer, so I couldn’t not listen to what he was asking of me.
One afternoon in early May, Lorca gave me an image of a river, and me, a little flailing speck being carried by that river. In the image, I was thrashing, kicking, and screaming. I grabbed overhanging branches, rocks, anything I could get my hands on. I tried frantically to swim against the current, exhausting myself.
I understood, from this image, that my movements were just a response to the river; nothing I did changed the current, the current’s speed, its timing, its direction.
The river is still the river. The current is still the current. The time is still the time.
Lorca’s death was not something I could control. Neither could I control my own process of “becoming ready.” I could flail, I could grab and cling, and still the river moves as the river moves.
There is sadness and freedom to this truth. Freedom, because every reaction is okay, because nothing affects the current anyway. It’s just me learning how to be inside it. Me coming to see what is, versus the stories I’ve told myself about death, about what I believe to be my fault, what I believe to be in my control.
There were times that I believed my struggles with his process were messing things up, or worse, causing harm to Lorca somehow. This fear and self-blame, too, were simply a response, not a cause of what was happening. My struggles didn’t change the course of the river, for better or for worse.
Lorca held space for my flailing, my resistance, my struggles; he let me know that it was okay that I wasn’t ready to surrender to what wasn’t in my control.
I always thought of surrender as either sexy or troubling. Sexy, as in the ecstatic surrendering of the body to another. Or troubling, as in surrendering one’s will to another’s.
But surrender might not look like ecstatic release, nor like losing a battle for power.
Sometimes surrender might look like exhaustion. The body letting go of its resistance because there’s nothing left with which to fight.
Sometimes surrender might look like doing what needs to be done, whether or not one ever feels “ready.”
When the time came to call the vet and make the appointment for her to help him cross over, my panic escalated. I asked Lorca, “How will I ever be able to do this?”
Lorca told me: “You set the time. And then you move through it however you move through it, wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got with you. If that’s panic, you move through it with that panic.”
The time was set for 11:00 am on Friday.
How does one know how to be while one is waiting for this kind of appointment?
All Thursday night and Friday morning, my partner and I took turns lying with our face close to his, breathing with him.
Intermittently, I would think of all the things I should have done but hadn’t. Why didn’t I get clay paw prints made? I will run down to the store right now, buy flour and salt, and make my own!
But I didn’t do that, because I needed to be here.
At 10:50 am, my panic escalated to the point of impossibility. It felt impossible to be in my body, but not being present for him felt more impossible.
Maybe we could text the vet and move the time...! But she was already on her way.
Maybe we could postpone for another day…! But Lorca was already on his way.
This was absolutely impossible, and yet, the time was set.
It was now 10:55.
With my panic, I lay down next to him.
With my panic, I pressed my forehead to his forehead.
With my panic, I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine. He pressed his forehead back into mine, and it felt like I was looking into his soul, and something that felt like “the universe” in his eyes.
I am reminded only now, as I write this, that I had been preparing for this moment several years ago without knowing it, during a trip to Costa Rica when a horse named Beauty chose me, as I sat in a circle blindfolded.
For one week, Beauty worked with me on my PTSD, that Zero to-60 place I go when I hear a loud sound, or I’m surrounded by too many people, or when my panic-wire is tripped by anything my nervous system reads as “danger.”
On a day-long trail ride, up and down slippery muddy hills, through rushing rivers, Beauty patiently, yet firmly kept calling me back to my body, to be with myself and her through my fear. When I’d try to do what I’d done most of my life in response to difficulty—hold my breath, “buck up,” disappear from the scene of my body, and escape what I was really feeling in order to become “strong” or “fine”—Beauty would veer toward the edge of the cliff, causing my panic to rise so I couldn’t escape it.
“I’m terrified!” I exclaimed to her, and she gave me confirmation that I was on the right track with my exclamation by returning to the trail. When I’d disappear into thoughts and wasn’t actually with her, she’d let me know that as well, until I came to know the feeling of being with.
I’m terrified, but I’m with you.
I repeated it again and again to her.
I’m terrified, but I’m with you.
She gave me confirmation each time I said it, and she kept me safe.
We did this for the entire day-long trail ride. It was one of the most terrifying days of my life because I was actually present with my panic. Something I never would have chosen to do, if I was in control of the river.
I didn’t know then that this would be one of the most important lessons of my life.
It’s funny, right? All these attempts to control everything, and meanwhile, such a beautiful unseen net of support lies beyond our capacity to see. We get glimpses here and there, eruptions of synchronicity.
It took writing this essay for me to recognize how the river that Beauty set in motion several years ago led me here, to this moment with Lorca.
And so 11:00 arrived.
And with my panic, I showed up.
I was terrified, but I was with him.
It’s all he ever wanted from me. Not to fix or save him, not to try to fix or change myself, but to be with him, through it all.
And now...
I am flailing, kicking, screaming in another river.
Grief, too, is a river, traveling at its own unstoppable pace, to its own incoherent rhythms.
And it runs deep inside.
Here I am again, despite everything I’ve learned, being carried by currents larger than me, yet somehow believing that I should be able to control myself and my grieving process.
In a desperate effort to hold onto what I’ve lost, I cling, I refuse, I go under, I drown a little, I come up for air, I flail, I collapse, I judge myself, I blame myself for not trusting Lorca's signs, I defend myself to imaginary criticism, I analyze, I name things to myself constantly, and I blame myself not being “better” at this grief thing, whatever that means.
But I know that my struggles—all this work, all this thrashing and flailing to the point of exhaustion—is how I respond to what terrifies me.
Perhaps one of the most radical acts of surrender is to allow ourselves our own responses.
To hold space for ourselves, as our animals do.
To recognize that the river is the river, and the river will lead us places we can’t imagine, but we, the tiny humans, will sometimes fight hard against the river, even if the river knows better than we do.
When Lorca gave me the image of the river, I saw myself through his unconditionally-loving eyes.
He did not show me the river so that I could change how I was inside it. He showed me the river so that I could see how hard this process is for me. He showed me the river so that I could see myself with compassion and accept where I was inside it.
My struggles with his dying process did not make me any less worthy of his love. Nor did they cause him harm.
And now, my refusal, my resistance, my self-judgment, my moments of acceptance and release, my inconsistencies—this is grieving for me, right now.
These struggles do not make me any less worthy of love. Nor does my grieving cause him harm.
I know that he’s holding space for me.
I don’t know where the river of grief will lead me—toward a future in which I will never feel okay without him? Or one in which I will come to feel okay without him.
I am terrified of both.
But as Beauty and Lorca taught me to do—I am with myself, wherever this river leads.
“Lorca” by Stephanie K. Hopkins
