A Horse Story

Several weeks ago, I had dinner with some of my new Texas girlfriends.  All four of us have diverse backgrounds and none are Texas natives.  One is a former editor from Chicago, one is a Finnish musician and the other is an Alaskan native who moved to Texas in her youth.  Throughout the evening, we were sharing stories from our past and of how we got to where we are today.  As you can imagine, we had quite a collection of tales.

For some reason, I was remembering an encounter with certain extended family members shortly after my husband’s death.  What surprised me through sharing was how much my anger over the situation had subsided as time had passed.

It was Good Friday, 2010.  We had just buried my husband a week prior.  It was early in the morning and my kids, my mother (who was living and caring for us at the time) and I were resting at home and hoping to sleep in that day.  We lived on a 15 acre wooded estate and weren’t in the habit of locking our doors on a regular basis at night.  I woke to the sound of our dogs barking which really didn’t cause me much concern as they often barked at a deer, raccoon or other creature that wandered close by.

At one point my six-year-old daughter unexpectedly came into my bedroom and asked if she could ride her Auntie’s horse.  The children were supposed to spend the afternoon at their Aunt and Uncle’s farm and thus, my response was simply “of course.”   I thought she was unusually animated and excited about my response so I questioned her a bit.  She said,  “Auntie is here now and I am going to get ready” as she scurried out the room.  In my typical early morning mental fog, I still wasn’t sure what she was telling me.  Whereas my brother in law and his family lived just a couple of miles down the road, no one had ever ridden their horse over to the house so this simply sounded absurd.

I decided that I needed to investigate a bit more.  I got in my wheelchair with great effort (as I had only been out of the hospital a few weeks and was still in a great deal of pain) and proceeded to go into the main part of the house.  Sure enough Auntie was in my home lurking around while her horse was tied to a tree grazing on my front lawn.

(Auntie and I have had somewhat of a contentious relationship for years and for the most part didn’t interact much.  So this was totally out of the norm.)

Naturally, I was shocked that someone had the audacity to walk into my house unannounced and was greatly offended by the boldness of the actions – especially in my current state.  It was revealed that my sister in law rode her horse over when she assumed that we would all probably be sleeping.  She didn’t drive over like she would have normally as she was aware that the sound of a car driving down our gravel road would most certainly arouse me, especially on a holiday when we would not be expecting any visitors early in the morning.  She came to snoop, to see what she could find and was caught red handed. And to make the situation that much more appalling to me, she came riding in like Tonto on horseback.

You see one of those unpredictable / unforeseeable issues that I’m still trying to process is that often times when someone dies, sensibility and compassion are often tossed aside.  And people get weird – normalcy and rational behavior is lost.

Whereas this may sound like a trivial story 3+ years later, I gained a new perspective by sharing .   .  .

At the time, I was enraged, insulted, violated and very emotionally charged over her audacity, accusations, boldness and sheer irreverence.  What surprised me the other night was how in telling the story, I found humor in the absurdity of it all; at how my friends and I were on the brink of tears, laughing at a situation that at one time was ridiculous and appalling; and that how given time, this same ridiculousness brought about hugs, laughter and facilitated the sharing of dessert and another glass of wine.

In short, a situation that at once invoked such anger and hurt, now made me laugh.  What a blessing that time can transform one’s emotional reaction.

Moving forward with grace and forgiveness is what I work on every day – keeping this at the mental forefront can do wonders for the soul.