Stiletto

As my dear, dear friend Teresa says: "The thing about love is, you gotta be brave." No matter the object of that love, you must entertain and embrace the inevitable: the fact of loss, a leaving, a death, a passage, as part of life, not apart from it. It's a wider embrace that is needed.

Since the end of June, I've been deeply involved with the health of one of my horses, the absolute Prince of my pasture, Stiletto. Something wasn't right with him...I could tell. The light wasn't in his beautiful eyes. He foundered, then it was a series of violent, thrashing episodes, leaving him scared, scarred, and spirit-broken. My once-proud boy ended up unable to suck water down his beautiful throat, or eat properly, and often I'd find him standing in the corner, in the heat, or pacing uncontrollably round and round. He ran through so many fences, once ending up with the top strand of electric wire round his throat, still pulsing electricity...so I decided to put up a sturdy, metal round-pen, out of which he could not break. My wonderful girlfriend, Teresa and her girl, my two friends, Ann and Ann, and my strong Irish neighbor, Brian, all pitched in, Tom Sawyer-style, and we had it up in a day, all the while keeping worried eyes on Stiletto. By noon the next day, we decided to trailer him in my friend Danni's trailer to Corvallis, 45 minutes away, to the vet school there. He was so good about it, didn't even hurt himself or break a sweat. He walked inside the cool barn and seemed to like it there – he had so many attendants, checking everything, everyone trying so hard to figure out this elegant puzzle. Whatever was wrong was clearly neurological, but the presentations could have been caused by so many things. They put him in a stall and Teresa and I had to leave him there. We wept our way back home and she flew out, back to California, leaving me there by myself, alone with my fear and panic, my constant companions for these many days. Each time the wave of panic washed over me, Judy would talk me down, let me cry, steady me out. I love her so much. We were all so worried about him.

I called all day Monday, and Monday night, I got the dreadful call...Letto had gone down in his stall, and though they got him up on the third try and he was now comfortable, it did not look good. I called everybody to let them know, and we all prayed that he would last the night, or, if not, that he would go peacefully. By the next morning, things were dire, so I dropped everything and drove carefully up to Corvallis. I spoke to the receptionist who so kindly asked if I wanted some tea. I wailed, "Oh, I don't know", and she came round from behind the desk and put her arms around me and patted me while I wept and wept. Everyone was busy, so I went back by myself to see my boy. I found him lying down in his stall, his back to me, rounded curve of brown. The fragrant smell of cedar shavings was overwhelming. For awhile, I just looked at him, tears running down my face. I took a breath to get myself strong, and whistled him up. His ears perked and he struggled valiantly to his feet. That was the very last of himself that I saw, and he gave it to me to remember. He was practically unrecognizable...but still my beautiful guy. It broke my heart to see him try so hard. As I stood there,the doctor came and the students who were caring for him. God, but they were all so damn kind. Never once did they tell me how to feel or what to do. They felt so badly that we'd all run out of options for him. Then, to show me what life was like for him now, Stiletto proceeded to climb the walls with his body, smashing his soft nose and lips on his hay feeder, showing his teeth, smearing the walls with his blood, harsh breath coming and going. He said to me: Please, please let me out of this...please. And, to tell the truth, that made the hard decision the only one – and it was his. I could just speak for him, and I knew I had to do it, and that I could...for him.

I wandered out into the terribly bright noonday sun, and called Judy and called Teresa and told them he was going and we were letting Letto go. My cell phone went dead...so I slowly went into the barn to say goodby to my familiar, my beautifully fine blade of a boy, Stiletto. He was lying down now...heavily, heavily tranquilized. I quietly went in with him, and lay down beside him, curled against his back, my right arm around him. He was cold now, cold to the touch. His eye was jerking rapidly back and forth, the drugs working their magic. His breathing was so labored. I touched him all over everywhere, running my hands completely over that beautiful, tired body. At this point, he already had one wing through the wall. We just had to free the rest of him. I kissed the corner of his mouth, my favorite, favorite thing, so soft still, despite the seizures against the walls. I stood finally, and borrowing scissors, I cut swatches from his long,tail which had swept the ground and trailed like a flag when he ran. The doctor came in, and knelt there by my boy. Tenderly, he braided the Letto-man's mane,and cut it free, taping round the ends, and kneeling still, looked up and handed the braid to me. Open heart...flood full-on.

I left him there, but not there. I turned to those angel men and ordered them to send him sweetly, boys...send him sweet. And home I drove.

Writing this now, on my way back from Ottawa, I have wept many times, engulfed by this story, the depth of this event, by the betrayal of the flesh, of how love is and what it truly demands of us. Such a hard thing to do, such a beautiful boy to go. It was no one's fault. It was the hard luck of the draw. It turned out that he had a brain tumor the size of a golfball sitting on his pituitary, gradually suspending brain functions. It was no one's fault...and now he is free somewhere in pastures of plenty, there somewhere where the good ones go, there in green fields where the sweet waters flow. He gave me so much...Stiletto.