Diamonds in the Sand

                Diamonds in the Sand            Fall 1997

    Last year I saw a card with a beautiful cover of sky and clouds.  It had a quote by Andre Gide that went-- “He who would discover new lands must first consent to leave sight of shore for a very long time.”  It struck me to the quick, and I bought it.  I find I resort to it when my courage begins to wane or my heart begins to fail.  That has been often this year, a time of leaving so much--everything I have grown familiar with, whether in love, or ambivalence, or contempt.  Piece by piece, the elements of my life have flown from my hands like migrating birds--or set sail like little ships perched on a vast sea.  My son, full of promise, confidently and quietly pushed away from the moorings into his own destiny.  My husband, tired of trials, sold his business and resolutely took leave of a lifestyle and a community where he never felt at home.  He and I, taking another step; selling our house and gleaning over the warehouse of some twenty years, packing suitcases and counting the cost of our options; all that goes with closure.  

    There are many farewell vignettes in this story. We walked to the crossroads with some who left before us, endeavoring to be strong to the finish.  There were deaths of other sorts:  Death of hopes. Death of relationships in which we had much invested.  Death of heart where disappointments reached killing proportions.  Death of dreams where time ran out.  One by one, all the little ties and strings were being snipped, and each severance had its own last will, and its own peculiar estate; stuff to keep, stuff to throw out, stuff to leave behind.  Daily living was suspended while I dealt with all the details and the feelings and the motives.  Ultimately though, you have to move on, and you can really only take as much as you can pack into your thready heart.

    It was the last good by that will never be shaken out.  For me, it characterizes the entire season.

    One day as I was feeding my horse, I realized, chagrined, that spring summer and fall had gotten away, and I had not ridden my horse, March, once.  He was my little gem, my diamond in the sand, and whatever else I was struggling through, my place with him was a quiet sanctuary.  For a moment I hated myself.  I was always delaying my own enjoyment for some kind of obligation, and now I deeply regretted it.  I chided myself that so much sacrifice could be so futile, and steal the diamond of my heart in the bargain.

   
    I saw that something was not quite right with March. Perhaps it had already begun to register some weeks before, but when it took March two attempts to get up, I was wide awake and watching him.  His gaits were off.  I watched for a few days.  He was stocking up in the hind legs.  I called the vet.  Then I fretted, wondering if somehow I had ruined him.

    When the vet came, she had me turn March in tight circles and trot him out.  
    “I suspect he may have EPM,” she told me.  She explained the disease as one caused by a parasite uncommon to horses that can affect the spinal column and brain.  This results in locomotion problems due to nerve injury.  The parasite could be knocked out, but infection can re-occur. There is no prevention but to have the horse on powerful antibiotics from birth to death.  Caught early, damage is negligible, but it is cumulative and irreversible.  My heart sank.  This was going to cost.  When I discussed it later with Rob, he did not hesitate. 
    “We’ve got to give him a chance,” he said.  I made an appointment with the vet.
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    The first spinal tap was relatively easy.  We had a warm sunny day.  March was sedated, laid out, shaved at the poll, and then the vet painstakingly tapped in the needle, hunting for the clear fluid.  We made quiet talk and I tried not to stare at the needle.  She got her fluid, and after she left I stayed with March until he was on his feet and grazing.  I went back later and retrieved the lock of mane we cut to expose the poll.  Within days I was informed that the tap tested positive, so we began the long expensive treatments.

    Tragedy leaves you no time.  I had a yearning desire to be on March’s back--it had been a year since we had gone out on the trail.  I saddled him up in the pasture with wistful plans just to sit on him, but when I put my weight in the stirrup, the leather broke. There I was, standing on the ground with a crippled horse and a busted leather in my hand. I realized at that point I would never ride March again.  It was a reluctant resignation that I didn’t challenge again.  Instead, I had explosive conversations with God and vented my helplessness on His  shoulders.

    I talked with several horse friends about March’s illness and my distress. My friend Patty cajoled me into coming up to her barn for a ride just to keep me in the saddle.  I went up the end of November, ambivalent and quiet.  She gave me a lovely liver chestnut Morgan mare named Leigh.  I cross-tied her and groomed her, awkward and uncertain and unacquainted.  Leigh had a luxuriant mane and tail, big hooves--in fact, she was bigger all over than my horse.  I missed his small comfortable size.

    We rode out through the fields together.  Leigh was eager, like March, and treated my nervousness with generosity, but her trot was not his jig.  Her dark coat was not his freckled white.  Her moves were foreign to me, and I just didn’t know how to sit on her.  We had a lovely ride, but I cried as I drove home. 

    From mid November ‘til the end of December I gave March his morning syringe of medicine, learning how to get it in him instead of all over the shed, and to get him to swallow it instead of spitting it all out, praying all the while for his healing with a struggling heart, knowing that the medicine was so crucial as it dribbled down to the floor, knowing that it would really take much more than modern science to heal my horse.  I think it was during this time that I came to terms with the fidelity of God’s will.  We necessarily see things from our own perspective: a little picture.  God, however, sees all those perspectives, and even when His answers seem incomprehensible, because He is holy, He only does what is right. A big picture, beyond my horizon.

    Near the end of December we had to schedule another tap to see if we had cleared March’s system of the parasite.  This tap took place on a raw winter day.  The air had a bitter edge to it, typical of upstate New York this time of year.  I lugged a great jug of hot water out to the pasture for Michelle, which she appreciated with country vet’s reverence as she soaped up.  This tap was more difficult, and we both alternately held our breath and chattered with as much shivering nonchalance as we could muster while March lay out under the sedative.  Miche tried several times, pushing ever deeper into March’s neck.  The first needle became contaminated with blood and she had to start over.  When she finally got her spinal fluid, she let out an audible sigh and confessed her relief.  I wondered if we were doing the right thing and didn’t think I could consent to submit March to another tap further down the road.  My fingers were stiffening with the chill.

    March tested positive the second time, and we started another expensive round of meds.  The daily routine became a comfort because of its care.  I became good at administering his syrup and looked forward to the daily foot check, carrots, and grooming.  There was reassurance in the repetition, reassurance in the prayers of faith and hands on the horse.  There was even reassurance in the tears shed upon his mane, and all the wordless communications with God.  How I did love the fine little horse.  There are not words to explain it--it is an unreasonable thing.  How many times I prayed him to be healed.  But, if my trust was truly in God, how could I protest the answer, or walk away from its requirements?  To me, the diagnosis of EPM was the sentence of death, and all its medications only vain.  I had to go through the motions not believing in them except as a willing demonstration of my faithfulness.  My confidence was in God alone.

    I made a gift of my horse to Him.  Jesus returns on a white horse, and it occurred to me that perhaps no-one else ever offered a horse to the King.  At the same time, it is unlikely a King has no horse. I made my gift anyway.  March was a small stallion according the the measure of a man, but his spirit is tall, and his eye is deep. He was certainly more horse than I was capable of.  I learned much about dignity from him.  Once when I was in the shed, crying about something, he came over and lowered his head into my lap. It took me completely by surprise. I could talk a long time about what he was like, and what I learned from him.

    I never had the assurance that March would be healed, though I prayed for it daily, and as it was, God chose a sacrificial path for us.  This was not unreasonable; given the unwinding world we travel through. Ultimately, the sacrifice will be overshadowed by the reward, for which I am very grateful.  It is certain, flesh counts for nothing.  It is the spirit that brings life.  As much as I loved March, as unreasonably and unexplainably as I loved him, I knew I could not withhold him from God’s choice, no matter the sacrifice.  God answered my query with a request of His own; that I be strong to the end, and not break faith even if I had to walk to the death with the fire and the knife.

    By January’s end, it became apparent that cured or not, we could not afford to continue medicating March.  I had an intimidating vet bill and a son in college.  So we finished with the antibiotics and hoped for the best.  At best, we effected a cure. 

    In early spring, I had Miche come over to evaluate March.  She confirmed what I knew already and just hadn’t admitted.  He was finished as a useful horse.  And what kind of danger was he in, alone in his pasture over three miles from home, unsupervised most of the time?  What if coy dogs came?  At first I was so crushed I asked Miche to put him down right away.  Then I relented.  My grief couldn’t be the yardstick.  My friend Kirby urged me to keep him on over the summer.  We were not out of time.

    Good Friday I euthanized my dog Abbie.  She was fourteen, full of age, and I had been nursing her through her last painful days as I had been nursing March.  We dug a hole in March’s pasture and buried her there. Rob cried.  I bit my lip. Another severance. Fourteen years, ending in the pasture.  Oddly, as the last shovel of dirt was scattered, I felt as though we’d been planting tulips.  There was no brooding. The inevitability of death pervaded my life, that’s all.  I could only acknowledge the grace God gave in such a season.  And this; the slow shock of the resurrection of life, that rises so lightly from the finality of the grave. 

    In May, Rob and I visited my folks in Washington State.  We’d been working on moving West for a long time, and this trip was the clincher.  This time it is really going to happen.  We came home, put the house back on the market, and I started thinning out. I had utterly lost heart, however, and my gardening and cleaning and thinning were all rote and no involvement.  Just another series of details and stuff to finish and leave.  And there was everything to leave, since I was becoming reluctant to pack my thready heart. I just wanted to leave.

    Weeks went by and I put off the inevitable with March.  He was living quietly on the land.  I was busy with details.  We couldn’t ship him to the West coast, but it was late before I could force myself to begin to deal with this detail.  Now, just maybe I could find him a home.  What agony!  I made calls to area barns.  I put out the word among rare bloodline arab breeders.  I contacted rescue and placement organizations, which were all overrun with horses far healthier and younger and more desirable than March, most of them ultimately headed for auction and probably slaughter.  I ran ads for a “special needs horse.”  Who was going to fuss over him the way I did?  Without exception, my close horse friends urged me to go ahead and euthanize the 22 year old stallion because even though it is bitterly hard, it is undeniably not the worst thing that can happen to an unusable horse. 

    Things began to pile up.  We had a serious offer on the house, and negotiations ensued.  Plans were made to send me off ahead to Washington.  The only response to my ad was completely untenable.  I was pursuing two avenues going in opposite directions with equal resolution, but by this time I could see that euthanasia was really where we were headed.  Kirby gallantly offered to take care of this final detail for me after my departure, and since I was leaving so soon, I gratefully accepted.  But after a few days, I took the bull by the horns and set an earlier date with the vet.  Then I called Mr. Clippel to dig the hole, and accepted Kirby’s offer to stand with me.  I wanted to walk it out to the end.  It wouldn’t do to abandon March to unfamiliar hands.  I picked October 15th.

   
    When that day dawned, it was overcast and drizzly.  We had just finished the most glorious Indian Summer I could remember, and the colors of the trees were magnificent in their splendor under the graying sky.  Grace upon grace.  Mr. Clippel was waiting in the front pasture, sitting in his bucket loader when I arrived, and I talked with him for awhile.  He reminisced about Millerton and what a nice little country town it was to grow up in, and we talked about having horses. Mr. Clippel was a reassuring figure to me that day, a salt of the earth real person, who butchered game and kept dogs, who pastured a horse for his daughter when she was growing up.  He knew about both sides of life.  We chatted for some time, the smell of fallen leaves and damp grass all around, the air cool, the birds flocking in great patterns of moving joy in the sky.

    Then, it was time, and I walked over the bank to March’s shed, while Mr. Clippel went to dig a hole with the bucket loader near the big hay barn where I had loaded countless bales of hay onto my car.  I ground up the sedative tablets from the vet and mixed them with a little butter and molasses, which I in turn mixed into a little feed.  I tied March, and he munched down the medicated feed while I groomed him and fussed over him like I’d done a thousand times before.  I prayed that everything would go smoothly and quietly, like any other day.  I knew if he got uppity and excited it would be impossibly hard. Kirby showed up as she promised, and I asked her to watch for Michelle.  I didn’t want to startle March with them driving in.  Kirby went over the bank and I was alone again with the little horse, brushing his sides and pulling the burrs out of his tail, worrying them out of his white forelock with the usual fond comments.  By the time Miche came walking over the bank, March was quietly settled.

    The vet was deliberate, kind, and professional.  She administered the coup, and March toppled like a tree.  Then she knelt at his head, and Kirby wrapped her arms around me.  We clung to each other for a long minute.  I would not break down because I had to be strong, but I clung to Kirby.  I will walk with you to the end, I had said.  I will walk it out.  I will see you at home.  I turned then to look at the still white form.

    What a little horse he was, and how obvious that fact when he was flat on the ground.  How many hands high is the spirit?






    After Michelle was certain he was gone, we called to Mr. Clippel, who drove the bucket loader over, and as Kirby directed, we rolled March’s body into the bucket and tucked his legs in.  He looked very neat in the bucket all tucked in, all perfect, all fine in leg and neck.  We followed the bucket loader up to the front field, but I didn’t think I could watch the rest.  March was gone.  Kirby and I turned back to the shed, and loaded all the tools and buckets and ropes and brushes and other stuff into our vehicles.  By the time we were done, Mr. Clippel had finished.  I left without a backward glance. 

    At home I threw my clothes into the laundry and got into a hot bath and wept.  This also was a burial.





    The grave is a deliberate place.  I find myself walking up to it step by step, over and over.  There is no doubt about the grave. And then, the ground is covered over, and so much is left behind.  It is an end point, not a visiting place.  Walk away; nothing is the same.


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     “He who would discover new lands must consent to be out of sight of shore for a very long time.” 


    At gray havens, we boarded.  To the ropes, then! Unfurl the sails! We’re leaving.  The breath of God is guiding; put a responsive hand on the rudder.  Losing sight of shore is a burial as well, isn’t it?  Having lost sight of it, now I wait, floating toward the unknown.  The water washes at the memories, and I wonder sometimes if I will have any expectations at all.  I have been so earth-worn this season there were days when I would have perished if The One did not move to tuck me under his great, warm, feathered wing.

    I saw him off, and it was bitterly hard.  I was strong for them all, but my strength could not register the act of their spirits.  I was still there, but March was gone, past this realm, and all I have left today is the insulation of my heart.  Within this year, too, died a beautiful princess and a beloved nun.  It is a season chill and hard in its stately beauty, affecting everyone. From the Crown to the caste ghettos to the back country barns, there is a picking, and we are reminded of all that are pure, noble, just, lovely, and kindly spoken of because we escort them with cadenced measure to the end. 

    Then what?  What is there to go back to?  Where is home, when so much is buried?  We walk to the grave, part, and leave.  The absence begs an answer:  Coming home--coming together, returning, the reuniting, and the requiting of love and sorrow at very last, or else what are we strong for?  To just carry on? For what? Why on earth set sail into the unknown?  Only for the hope of other lands and other faces?   No. It isn’t enough.  To find comfort finally in the cold ground?  I beg to defer. The grave isn’t enough.

    I long to be redressed.  I cannot be comforted with an existential thump on the back and I’m not looking for new territory.  I’m homesick.  Only for that reason  can I bear to leave sight of shore.  Only for the hope of the eternal, the Home that does not shatter, can I stand to face the attrition of the temporal.  Although, honestly, there is a day so heartbroken that I willingly leave sight of shore, hoping to dissolve in a death that vanishes with no trace. Isn’t it so?  Yet even then, in my deepest grief, my bitterest anguish, my spirit cradles my broken heart in faith that a rising hand will resolve sometime in future. Foolishness?  No. Life. I am keeping faith.

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    Patty sold my saddle to a friend at no loss to me, and I paid off the vet with the money.  Some well-meaning people ask, “Will you have another one?”  I refrain from answering.  It isn’t just any replacement, is it? 

    Right now we are bumming a room at Larry and Linda’s and helping them set up the business as we prepare to move to Washington.  We have no place to live in Washington yet, and I cannot think any more. It is just as well. I have the memory of this fine little horse sewn to the inside of my heart like a coat lining, and the view of the world between his ears has focused my vision just so. 

    I gave all my diamonds back to the mother lode. Now I will wait to see what God will unearth for me.