Z PRINCESS. This is how I will always remember her. (Photo used by permission from Team Zenyatta. Photo and copyright, Tyler Matson for Zenyatta.com)
It was late in the day when I got online and saw the news. I just stared, unable to grasp the meaning of what I was reading. My heart burned for Zenyatta and her family, Ann and Jerry Moss, Dottie and John Shirreffs, Team Z support staff Kyle Acebo, Tyler Matson and Alys Emson, and the folks at Lane’s End. I wanted so much to tell them that they were not alone, to hug each one, to bring over the comfort of a meal to each household — as we do here when a loved one has gone.
But I only know Zenny and Team Z through the wonders of virtual reality and that same pixelated reality also has the scope to distance.
Grief is an intensely private process. When we respect those most bereaved, we understand their need for privacy.
This, then, seeks to bring comfort. I hope it will stand as a sentinel to keep loving watch over Zenny and her family, as thousands of her extended human family are doing right now, all around the world.
……. My father was a master of the sciences, for which he had the kind of reverence that we see most often today in quantum physicists. When I was very young and we lost my beloved Grandpa Wheeler to cancer, Dad counselled, “Just remember, matter can never be created and it can never be destroyed. We’ve lost Grandpa in a way that’s so painful, but Grandpa isn’t gone. He’s going to be in the sun, in the rain that falls, in the oceans, in the moon, in the air you breathe…..in everything you know.” At the time, I probably understood this as a statement of faith. But it came from Dad’s reverence for life as he knew it — scientifically. (I can still close my eyes today and hear his voice telling me that my Grandpa would never, ever be gone, even though Dad died over thirty years ago.)
Of course, he was absolutely right, as I was to discover through my own studies in quantum physics, and the discourse which best captures it — Buddhism. No life is ever extinguished. It just sheds one earthly appearance to take on another. And this has nothing to do with theories of reincarnation — it’s more profound.
It has to do with the miracle that sustains all of life, from our beautiful blue planet to a simple blade of grass to a thoroughbred Princess…………
And I hold close to the miracle.
Z PRINCESS, overcome by curiosity, heads towards the camera. (Photo used with the permission of Team Zenyatta. Photo and copyright, Alys Emson for Zenyatta.com)
THE VAULT: Horse racing past and present 