A Father and Daughter Encounter Death

My father was a true cowboy. I didn't see him as a cowboy, let alone a man. He was just my dad. In his hands he held my world and lifted me above its sadness. This was our fragile, unspoken agreement. A sliver of time when a father's magic was the answer to all a daughter's questions.

We lived in a small town, essentially the middle of nowhere. I knew there was a larger world beyond my safe boundaries, but I had no desire to go there. The world I knew included a huge backyard for playing any kind of game you can imagine, full run of acres and acres of cemetery for playing hide and go seek with all the neighborhood kids. And we had horses.

My dad hadn't figured out how to live his life without them. My mom had laid down one law early in their marriage. She would not be left at home in a rundown farm house with no real heat or decent running water. My mom understood my dad's need to tinker in the barn, take care of his horses, make fences and build corrals, but he would have to understand there were limits to what she could endure. This was their first compromise. That we would live in town and the horses would live on rented property just beyond the city limits. Everyone was happy.

Sunday afternoons were always reserved for going out to the horses. There was always one very gentle horse for me to ride, and for a time, one I called my own. Sometimes there would be an unfamiliar one in the barn because my father was often paid to "break" a horse. A horse has to be tamed and taught to be ridden. He had a very gentle touch, my father, with a magical way of turning an untamed animal into a reliable riding horse. In his mind, if you had the skill and the patience, you could break a horse without breaking its spirit.

Most Sundays I sat perched on the fence, cowboy boots donned, watching him at work. There was no mistaking how much my father loved and revered these beautiful creatures. They must have seen it too. If I wasn't watching him break a horse, I was riding alongside him, through the pasture, looking for breaks in the fence or places that needed mending. Sometimes there were medications that needed to be administered or shoes that needed trimming. Looking back, I can see why this place was such a refuge for him. There was no end to the work that needed to be done, but his labor was love and in this world he was king. He was needed by the animals he cared for and loved by the little girl in pigtails who still wanted to hold his hand.

On the day my horse, Beauty, had her colt, I had been around my dad and our horses for so long I never imagined being without them or the routine he and I shared most Sundays or any other day of the week we were able to escape. But this would be no ordinary day. We knew the colt could be coming at any minute, or perhaps had already been born. We were headed out to the horses with excitement and anticipation. I was about to witness a miracle.

The day was bright, one of those glorious, cloudless days. We parked the pickup in its usual place and headed for the barn. The barn was dark and dusty, filled with the unmistakable odor of a horse's skin, that intoxicating smell left on your clothing after a day of nose rubbing and post-ride curries. Beauty was there, but she wasn't my horse just then. She was a frantic mother, exhausted. Agitated. She had the look of a beast who would give her very life to protect the helpless spindly creature she had borne.

The vet was already there. Explanations were exchanged between he and my father. I knew without asking that something had gone terribly wrong. The colt lie on the ground, over the strewn hay, at the feet of her mother. A colt will stand just after she is born. But there was something wrong and the fresh new shiny beauty would not see the sun go down on her very first day.

I sat down and wanted to be near the warm and struggling creature. My father explained to me that there was a rare discord between Beauty's blood and what now ran through her colt. The very thing that had given life to her colt in the womb was going to be her certain death in the dusty, dimly lit barn.

There was my father, in his realm, with his gentle creatures and his daughter, helpless. I suppose he could have removed me from the scene, told me to go sit in the pickup while he and the vet took care of things. But, he didn't. This was my colt and right now she needed me. You don't run away from a dying animal. You face it, pick up its body and hold on to it. You love it while you can, you whisper to it and you stroke it. You kiss its nose and you be there with her until she breaths her very last breath.

I suppose this is the first day I stepped just outside the world he had crafted for me, perhaps the first crack in our agreement. The sadness of that day would swallow me up and I would choke on this cruel death. I wouldn't get the answer I wanted that day. My father was a real cowboy, full of compassion and care for the animals whose daily lives depended on him, but he was also a man. He was a man, and a father; sometimes being a father means facing death with your daughter.

KJJ
Dec 2009