I recently saw a man die. Right in front of me. One moment he was alive and talking and the next....Mark was a highly respected horseman. I went to audit his clinic. I went to be inspired and bring my horse and study with him the next time he was in the area.
It was a weekend clinic and originally I had intended to go on Saturday and watch a good friend with her horse participate. But she had to cancel. And then my enthusiasm waned. On Saturday I allowed other things to occupy me, and found myself dithering about even bothering to attend on Sunday. But Sunday morning I awoke bright and early and decided why not just get in the car and go. I was interested in what he had to say and here he was less than an hour away. Why miss this opportunity?
Arrived at the farm while the first participant was just saddling her horse. Mark came out of the barn and immediately engaged me. What an amazing presence he had. There were no other auditors and seemingly no other riders about just then. He sat down beside me and we chatted and connected while his first rider was getting ready. Then during that first lesson it felt like he was talking to me—explaining what he was doing and what he was feeling from the horse. He made me feel like I was the only person there.
Then on to the next horse and rider. Only she wasn't riding and wanted Mark to ride this horse. Apparently she had been studying with him for some time and he knew her horse. Everything appeared to be so normal. I am describing all this as what came next turned out not to be anything but normal.
He saddled the horse and walked it over to the mounting block. He put his left foot in the stirrup and just barely began to swing his right leg over the horse's back when the horse exploded. Exploded is the only word for the what happened as it was all over.
The body that landed on the ground looked child sized—there was no being, no soul, no energy left. I had a hard time equating what was lying there with the man I had just met and been talking with. Alive he was truly larger than life. And now he was gone.
The speed with which this happened, the unexpectedness of it, and to be confronted by death shook my soul. That this happened around horses—and that horses are—my life, my release, my place of being, my refuge, my solace, my love, my passion. How could I take in what happened and internalize it in such a way that it would not foreshadow my enjoyment of them?
There was no place for me to turn as I was at a facility I did not know, with people I did not know, in a town I did not know. I was alone. Here we are again at that word. Alone. I recognize that at crisis times I want to reach out. To just talk to Robert and share and be held. This is what we did throughout our lives together—shared with each other.
I recognized a need to share what I had witnessed with others. And so I kept telling and retelling the event as I experienced it. Trying to come to terms with what I saw and make sense of it—if such a thing was possible.
My thoughts turned to his wife, who had no idea what had happened. She would be getting a phone call that would say what?!?!? She was a widow and she did not know it yet. I remembered of my time with Rob, and that in the end I sat and watched and waited for a few weeks. Knowing the end was coming just not when. Not sure it makes much of a difference expecting death or having it come out of nowhere. Death is not something you can ever prepare yourself for. Oh you think that knowing it is coming makes it easier. I am not so sure having lived with it hanging over us. In the end death is sudden when it happens, no matter how it happens.
