When I Lost My Anchor, Sita Came and Sat Beside Me
When I Lost My Anchor, Sita Came and Sat Beside Me...
Sometimes a dog doesn't heal your pain. She simply refuses to let you face it alone.
Life had been moving very fast....There were too many things to do, too many people to answer...too many plans waiting to be built...
The farm, the hospital, the business, the writing.....the endless little demands of an ordinary everyday life....
I was doing it all, as I always did.....Until Amma fell one night...
And suddenly…my world stopped and then crashed....
Amma was admitted to hospital. Then she came home...
Then, before we had even recovered from the first shock, she was admitted back to hospital....two hospital admissions in one month.
Every phone call made my heart jump...every unfamiliar sound from her room frightened me....
I knew Amma was old. My brain knew that one day, I would have to face what every child eventually faces....
Everyone told me the same thing.
" Aw! She is old."
"These things happen."
"You have to accept it."
"Everyone has to go one day."
"You are getting too emotional"
They weren't wrong...but they didn't understand at all...Love doesn't become less because someone becomes old. There is no age at which a mother becomes less your mother....
There is no expiry date on the person who has been your emotional home.
And I discovered something uncomfortable during those weeks...Sometimes you cannot explain your grief to people. Not because they are cruel...But because what is happening inside you is too intimate to translate...
I didn't want philosophy, nor someone telling me about mortality. And didn't want to hear that I should be strong....
I just wanted someone to understand that I was scared like a child....
I stopped talking. I carried it quietly inside.
Outside, I continued to function normally. Inside…something had collapsed...
One night, I was sitting on the bed, lost, just staring...
The room was quiet...My mind wasn't.
There were hospital corridors inside my head....questions...memories....
And that terrible thought that comes when you suddenly realise that someone you always assumed would be there…may not always be there.
I was grieving before I had even lost Amma..and I hated myself for it.
Then Sita, our dog, came in....she didn't rush.
She didn't jump onto the bed. She didn't demand attention....
She simply walked over…and sat beside me.
And looked at me...quietly....directly.
Those eyes...for a few seconds, neither of us moved.
And I don't know what Sita saw. But I felt seen....Not the version of me that answers messages. Not the man who makes plans.
Not the person everyone expects to keep going. Or the professional doctor...
Just…Me.
Sita slowly climbed onto the bed. Then moved closer...closer....until her body pressed against mine.
And then Sita rested her soft muzzle on my right shoulder, looked at me with calm eyes..
And breathed gently. That's all.
No grand gesture. No miracle....
Just a warm body, a soft nose, a heartbeat,
a breath....another breath.
At first, I was irritated. Honestly, I wanted to be alone....
I almost moved Sita away. But then I noticed something...
Sita's breathing was slow, steady and unhurried...
And without realising it…my breathing began to change too.
I was breathing with her. The tension in my chest began to loosen...my shoulders dropped. The noise inside my head became quieter.
And then…the tears came streaming...I turned my face away.
But Sita didn't move....She simply stayed.
"Sita…"
That was all I could say.
And then I cried...not the controlled kind...
The kind of crying you do when you've been holding something inside for too long.
Sita didn't try to stop or look frightened or leave...
"It's okay. You don't have to hold it anymore."
I've spent years reading about Wellness, Medicine, stress physiology, sleep, meditation, autonomic nervous system and human behaviour.
And science tells us something dog lovers have known intuitively for generations....Our bodies respond to other bodies energies.
A calm presence can help us regulate. Gentle touch can reduce perceived stress.
Human-animal interaction has been associated with changes in stress and emotional wellbeing....it is well known.
Dogs don't need to give us advice. Sometimes their greatest gift is simply co-regulation,
their calm nervous system meeting ours when ours has forgotten how to be calm.
Sita didn't solve anything that afternoon....
Amma was still sick. The future was still uncertain. Nothing outside that bedroom had changed....
But something inside me had.
For perhaps the first time in weeks…I wasn't fighting the feeling. I was simply feeling it....With a dog breathing quietly against my shoulder.
That night, Sita eventually got up and walked away.
I watched her leave. Then I smiled through the tears.
Because I understood something I had somehow forgotten....
Dogs don't always heal us by making us happy.
Sometimes…they heal us by giving us permission to hurt. They sit beside the part of us that nobody else can reach.
They don't tell us..
"Don't cry."
They seem to say...
"Cry. I'm here."
Amma is home now, little better.
I don't know what the coming days will bring.
So I'm trying not to borrow tomorrow's grief today. Today, Amma is here.
Today, I can sit beside her.
Today, I can hear her voice.
Today, I can be her son.
And today…Sita is still here too.
Perhaps that's what dogs teach us about Wellness better than any textbook.
Healing isn't always fixing what hurts. Sometimes healing is having someone or something stay beside you while you hurt.
No judgements, explanations or hurry...
Just a presence....A warm body beside yours. A gentle breath.
A pair of eyes saying...
"I don't understand everything you're going through.
But I understand that you're hurting.
And I'm not leaving."
That night, I thought I was comforting myself. I was wrong....
Sita was comforting me.
And perhaps, in the strange mysterious mathematics of love…I didn't rescue her.
Sita rescued me......si.
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