This is a hard one.
This past week I lost my horse Penny.
I was always planning on talking about my horse in my book, but never in past tense. But life is that way sometimes. And as much as it hurts, we have to keep going.
LIFE
SUCKS.
THE
END.
That message is one that everyone needs to hear and understand. It should
be the main lesson taught in schools and by parents all around the world.
Today we are finding that Political Correctness, or PC is ruling our
lives. We don’t want to say or do anything that might “offend” someone. Even
red ink has been banned from some schools fearing that it might ruin a
student’s self-esteem, when what it should be doing is pumping a student up.
Showing them what they need to fix, because nothing is better than seeing
little to no red ink on your paper. That right there is a great confidence
booster. But I guess this is coming from someone who loves to write. So I might
be a bit biased.
But this story isn’t about red ink, or being PC, it’s about death. Death
and its solid certainty; but especially its unexpectedness.
I always saw myself as a person who had a firm grip on the inevitability
of death. Being around farm animals my whole life, I saw myself as someone who
knew it backwards and forwards. That no matter how much love and care one can
give a sick calf, she might still die. That yes, I would feel the
disappointment in myself, but I could still put the body away, and not have it
affect to me too bad.
Most of these stories that I tell have long since passed, since I am now
a fulltime college student, living away from home. But this one is fresh, and
very raw.
When I talk about understanding death, I’m not saying that I have all the
answers, about it. All I’m saying is that I know how unpredictable life can be
and how suddenly it can change. And that happened to me just this passed weekend.
April 2, 2012.
It was a Monday morning, just starting the week, and a new term at
school. I was still home because I didn’t have to go to class yet and I
couldn’t wait to enjoy my one more day of break. Especially since I had had a
long work schedule earlier.
I got out of bed and was going to let Sailor out for the morning. I
walked down the back porch stairs and went to put on my shoes. Habitually I
looked outside, I wanted to check the weather, and see if anything interesting
was happening. But not much goes on around 7 in the morning.
The first thought when I saw her lying there was, very un-me. In fact I
have been struggling with why I thought that for the past week now.
“Oh great, who died?” the tone
in my mind was sarcastic and harsh. Not something I usually think. Especially
since I knew right away the body wasn’t that of a cow.
At first I thought that it must be one of the llamas, but something about
the shape of the legs made the color drain from my face, and a tiny far off
voice in my head go, “Oh no.”
I let Sailor out. That “Oh no” voice knew it was Penny. But everything
else was in shock and denial. I looked out for her in the field as I made my
way over to the barn. Desperately looking for her to be in the field. But for
once in my life, I was able to spot every llama in the field. Never had that
happened before.
But I still couldn’t believe that this was my horse on her side in the
barn, still. Very still. Most people freak out when they see an animal lying
still. But I seem to have this sixth sense in my mind that can differentiate a
dead animal from a sleeping one. The stillness. It seems to speak to me in
weird way. I can’t really describe it. But I can tell. And I knew she was dead.
The rest of me just had to catch up. Mainly my “pet loving” part of my
brain. My “farm brain” knew it, but my pet side, specifically reserved for
them, hadn’t yet. I’m sure this is making no sense. But you’re getting a look
into how my brain functions.
I stood there for a good ten seconds, my mouth open, and one tear flowing
down my cheek. I didn’t even know I was crying, I was so shocked. I wiped it
away and called Sailor back, I wanted to go inside and try to process what I
had just seen.
My farm brain now kicked in. trying to catch any signs of odd behavior
from her. There were none. Which made the fact that she was so dirty important.
That was one of the reasons I thought she was one of the llamas
originally. She was just caked in mud. When I had last seen her, no I wouldn’t
take her to any shows, but she was no way as dirty then as she was when I saw
her next.
We believe she fell in the creek, and got colic. But it’s just a guess.
The rest of the day was a haze. I sat in my room looking through my
scrapbook pages of her and remembering her.
One memory really stood out. I couldn’t have been more than 13 or 14, and
it was a gorgeous evening, in the late spring. I was out riding her in one of
our fields and I was just talking to her. I remember some conversation about
dresses for graduation, but not much else. And I remember her ears cocked in my
direction as I spoke.
But all too soon I grew to be too big for her, and school soon took over
my life. I only saw her when I fed her, and the occasional brushing in the
spring when her coat began to shed. Every once and awhile I would go for a
bareback ride, but not much else.
When I thought back on that, I began to see how little time I spent with
her and guilt hit me. I didn’t feel I had the right to cry over her. I hardly
saw her anymore. I also felt bad that I wasn’t there for her in her last hours.
That I wasn’t there to comfort her. But some things I have to realize are just
out of my control, and that the feelings are just more pain and grief from
losing a friend.
Penny and I had some great years. Most of the time I would curse her name
as she would make me chase her around the field to catch her, but she was just
making me earn it. That in turn sparked my idea for my “Bad Pony” art studio.
And once I had the rope on her, she would begrudgingly enough follow me
wherever I would take her.
Her favorite times where when I would take her inside the calf house
during bad storms. She would get lots of water, hay, and grain, and she would
get to torment the calves. Her favorite past time was to torment cows. I think
before I owned her, she had had cattle experience. She knew how to get those
dumb bovines to move.
I always knew her day would come. That’s how I am with every pet. But the
fact that she passed so sudden was a big blow.
But like I said before, life sucks, and it hits you hard. The only way to
recover is to keep going. Believe me, when she died, all I wanted to do was go
to bed and never move again. But the best thing for anyone to do is keep busy
and keep your mind occupied.
I don’t know if I’ll ever own another
horse again. I want to, I love horses, and it makes me very sad to think that
Penny would be the only one I’d ever own. But I don’t know where life will take
me.
For now I’ll cherish the 11 years I
had with her, and be happy that my childhood dream of owning a horse came true.
