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Short Stories & Tall Tales
My Mother and My Horse
Teresa Owen
I was blessed with a very good mother. She was kind, thoughtful, generous, creative, and a great cook. When she was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease at age 65, I tried my utmost to return her many caring gestures.
For two years she declined. As she regressed from a vibrant, outgoing caretaker to an immobilized, unspeaking dependent, I began to reflect on our happier times together. Easily, the best times of my life were when I was about 10 years old on the family farm.
My mother endlessly pleaded with my father to let me have a horse. I devoured every Zane Grey and Will James book ever written, purchased a complete grooming kit from the back pages of Western Horseman magazine (of which I was a subscriber) and owned 30 Breyer horses. She saw a daughter with a passion and wanted to nurture it.
One evening we sat at the dinner table and saw our neighbor Jerry driving up our road. Dad went outside, assuming the talk involved fencing, irrigation, or equipment swapping. Dad returned a few minutes later. Rather than coming to the dinner table, he just ducked his head in the dining room door and said, "Teresa, you need to come out here." I figured I was probably in trouble again for leaving a gate open after visiting Jerry's horses.
I gulped the last of my stew and went outside. Mom followed. Jerry had a bridle in his hand. Great, I did forget to close a gate and need to go track down the horses? I hated when I did that. I felt like such a complete failure. Will James would have been disgusted to see an aspiring cowgirl so forgetful of the most basic cowboy code: close all the gates behind you!
I put my head down as Jerry handed the bridle to me. I stared at my feet and braced for his admonition.
"There's a mare down at my place, if you can catch her and get this on her, she's yours," he told me.
I blinked and looked up.
Mom put her hands to her face and covered her mouth.
In the pause that followed Jerry's statement, I tried to gather my thoughts. That mare hadn't been there for months. I knew he traded her for some hay for his cattle, did he get a different one? Why was he giving me a horse? HOW did he EVER convince Dad of this? Did he really mean that I could have it or just ride it? What about the gate?
As the questions flash-flooded my mind, my father growled, "Better just get down there and get her before I change my mind."
I couldn't stop the tears from welling up in my eyes, and I threw my arms around Jerry's waist and thanked him.
"Well shoot, you quit talking to me after I traded her. I felt so bad I had to get her back." Jerry patted my back.
I recalled this event numerous times, partly for how happy it made me, but mostly for how happy it made my mother. She knew nothing about horses except that horses were her daughter's passion. She wrote a story about the "Gift of the Chestnut Mare," conferring with me for the proper descriptives: her coloring, her height as measured in hands, and any other horse terms required to tell the story. The story circulated in the family Christmas cards and at one point was even submitted to Reader's Digest magazine.
My mother was happiest when her kids were happy.
"What is her name?" my mother slowly pecked at the keys on her speech augmentation device. Lou Gehrig's first attacked her throat and tongue, requiring her to eat through a tube and type her conversations on the device.
"Wrigley" I typed back.
"Good" she typed.
I didn't know that mom would die two weeks after we brought the two-year-old red dun filly home. It had been 10 years since I owned a horse. It took my mother's illness to remind me how important it was to do what truly makes us happy.
I think I also wanted a horse as a consolation prize of sorts for losing my mother. The process of watching her die was a guilt-ridden one that I simultaneously wished would end soon, but wished would never have happened to begin with. I knew it was dangerous to entertain the notion that a horse might heal my pain. Certainly that was a lot of pressure for a two-year-old filly with very little human exposure.
When we first moved my mother to an assisted living home, I spent the night on the floor of her room. She never said as much, but I knew that it might be lonely, scary, and unfamiliar. She needed special care. She needed reassurance, and she needed company. The next day as I left for work I said, "I love you." She responded on her device, "obviously."
My husband and I unrolled our bedrolls next to the new haystack, which was next to the corral, in which Wrigley dozed. It was her first night. In all of her short life she'd never been a lone, herdless horse. I worried she'd spook, or whinny all night, or go on a destructive bender of some sort. After a peaceful night's sleep I greeted her at her gate. She came to me and nickered.
The day before mom died, Wrigley refused to be caught. This has never happened before or since. On that day, however, it took four hours. I knew that once I started the process of trying to catch her, which was just so I could look at her foot, I needed to follow through. Wrigley wouldn't have anything to do with me. I grew increasingly frustrated, just wanting to catch her, then go and sit with my mother. Wrigley fussed uncharacteristically. She avoided me, ran away, and all the while she sweated and fretted. I finally caught her, pet her for just a few seconds, and then turned her loose.
In my mother's room I placed the speech augmentation device next to her bed. She weakly pushed it away. She tried to move her head, and pawed at her blankets with the one hand she could move. I shifted her in her bed, pulled her blankets down a little, anything to try to find just one thing that could make her comfortable. She sweated and her breathing came in shallow gasps. Simple survival had become an unbearable ordeal for her. I couldn't communicate with her, I couldn't alleviate her fears or make her comfortable. After several hours her struggle became overwhelming for me. To avoid letting her see me cry or see how terrified I was, I kissed her forehead and told her I loved her, then went out of her room to ask a nurse for more morphine.
It was the last time I saw mom alive.
Wrigley and I enrolled in a Buck Brannaman clinic in Spanaway, Washington. She'd come a long way in her training and some of my horsemanship skills from long ago were coming back to me, slowly. We rode for four days under Buck's watchful eye. My little dun filly transitioned from skittish and unsure, to brave and confident. I knew as I rode her that I made numerous mistakes, even more than the few kindly pointed out by Buck. Wrigley still managed to learn and progress while quietly and kindly tolerating my shortcomings.
We bought Wrigley for all of the wrong reasons: color, emotional distress, as some sort of replacement for my mother. I even struggled with the thought that maybe she wouldn't or couldn't fulfill any of my desires. We might not get along, she might be more of a handful than I wanted, she might be dull, or she might be too much for me. The list of ways I could fail her is a long one.
Instead we've been blessed with a very good mare. She is kind, generous, and forgiving. She is happiest when I am happy. I will do my best to return her many caring gestures.
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