The Heart of my Warhorse still Beats in my Chest.
The week before COVID hit the outskirts of Seattle, I suffered an unimaginable loss, yet death did not get the last word.
Harvey smelled of warm, drizzled honey with melted salty butter on fresh-baked cornbread. I remember thinking that it was odd to have the sweet fragrance of homestyle baking emanating from my gentleman horse, given that he was covered in putrid outdoor blankets drenched with a mixture of sand, soil, and rainwater. He may have been covered in filth, but he smelled like heaven to me.
As I walked down the shedrow, I didn’t know this would be my last evening ritual with Harvey. I sensed anticipation behind thick wooden doors. A husky knicker rattled his old throat while a giggle of warm mist bubbled through moistened nostrils. Harvey’s liquid eye was huge, like a full moon filled with curiosity and punctuated with mischievous intent.
Although I was concerned about him, given the state of his health, I felt a sense of hope knowing that Harvey was busy hatching plans.
We were kindred spirits with dreams that far outpaced the limits of our bodies. Thankfully we never tried the crazy ideas that crossed our minds in moments of inhibition, largely because Trainer kept us in check. We would imagine our horse-human-Trainer dialogue going something like this:
“I am your warhorse,” Harvey would say…“I am your warrior,” I would say…“And I am your Trainer,” Kiri would say… FOILED AGAIN!
Then we would all laugh uproariously as we would return to reality. Harvey’s hips would show the hitch of his age, while my heart would race from dysautonomia-induced tachycardia, and Trainer would lovingly remind us to “walk-on” with MORE LEG…always more leg!
Opening the door, on this last night with Harvey, he met me at the latch. His eyes met mine, as they always do, attempting to read the situation.
What were we going to do?
I could see the possibilities running through his mind, from a horse hug to a horse walk to the ever-present dream of someday a big horse trip to another Grand Prix adventure! We both had big dreams, having had successful careers before life-changing injuries. Even though the grandiosity of our youth had passed, we were brought together for a reason. It was the grace of God at work in our lives, something that I thought was reserved for other people, until I met Harvey.
My marriage ended shortly after the traumatic brain injury that changed my life in 2011, long before I met Harvey. “You are not the woman I fell in love with anymore,” he said. Although I was angry about the injustice of it all for some time, and I still have moments where I struggle with feelings of abandonment, my own healing process revealed that his willingness to voice his truth finally set me free. In that freedom, I discovered something more valuable than my marriage — I learned that I am deeply and innately lovable.
Still…
The phantom limb pain of losing the man who had been with me for half of my life was excruciating. I felt desperate to know that someday I would find LOVE again.
In the quiet of my deepest questions, I often wondered if I even knew what LOVE was?
I couldn’t imagine losing a relationship that I had since I was 17, setting out on my own with a life-altering disability and a 2-year-old daughter, and trusting that it would all turn out okay, and yet that is exactly what I did.
Shortly after the separation, I fell to my knees on my birthday with burning candles in front of me and no one looking. Tears streaming down my face, I made a heartfelt wish for LOVE. At the time, I thought I wished for EROS — romantic love; little did I know that I had invited the love of GOD into my life.
Two days later, my neurologist suggested that I begin physical therapy in a sport where I had muscle memory. Although I hadn’t been on a horse since my early 20’s, I was an equestrian. He wrote me a prescription, and I was on my way. It took less than 36 hours from the instant my heartfelt wish escaped tear-soaked lips to the ineffable moment I stood staring at the most magnificent warhorse I’d ever seen, knowing that someday he would be mine.
In the end, it’s a question that inevitably arises in the sacred moments before saying goodbye … Where did the time go?
I had so much more time with him than I envisioned when I first signed his papers; yet even those eight joyful years were insufficient when I considered the dreams that remained for both of us. Like many great loves, no amount of time would ever be enough.
His tender skin gently pressed against my temple while course whiskers tickled my neck searching my upswept hair for tendrils of hay as if searching for blades of grass to snap with powerful jaws. I wasn’t fond of this game, because even accidental bites with blunt warhorse teeth were painful and, frankly, rude.
With an Alpha’s dominance, I turned immediately toward the giant creature standing beside me and established a clear boundary — Do Not Bite Me Harvey. I was marked with many nips from blunted teeth, and I did not intend to lose part of my scalp or face today.
As my eyes sternly met his, my reprimand was interrupted by a bright green wakeful dream. Exploring the edges of my hair, I could see his wandering imagination as he lingered in abundant pastures with endless grazing. Like emaciated cartoon characters drooling over rubber tires while steak and potatoes paraded on dancing forks, Harvey had descended into the madness of starvation. I felt shame that I didn’t know and that I thought he was still happy; yet, I knew this wasn’t a time for shame…it was simply a moment to lovingly accept what life had presented before me.
Harvey was happy. Harvey was starving. Harvey didn’t understand what was happening in his body. Harvey needed my help.
Taking stock of his health would require removing his big warhorse blankets, all three of them. He looked particularly charming in the outer layer — Thompson Family royal blue racing colors adorned a waterproof “raincoat” designed to keep him dry on the wettest Seattle days. Removing this sand-soaked layer revealed my favorite look on Harvey — the “badass warhorse in black.” Although his black blanket was waterproof, I treated them like pajamas so that they would always be clean and dry for my big boy. I am fairly certain that he liked his warhorse PJs, like a young cowboy dressed for bed as a character out of Tombstone.
Having removed his warm layers, his skin began to shiver with the rush of cold air. The only blanket left was his thin striped stable blanket acting like thermal underwear with warm insulation tight against his body.
Upon removing the final blanket, while running my hand along his back and down his flanks, I allowed myself to see the hind end that my Harvey had tried to hide. Just as I had hidden my own anorexia for many years, Harvey didn’t want anyone to see the extent of his illness. In the intimacy of the moment, him allowing me to see just how far he had declined, I reassured him that he was still the most magnificent warhorse that I had ever seen.
Showering him with all of the love that I had to give, I ran my hands over his sunken body. My fingers became an extension of his sensory system so that he could begin to notice the unseen parts that were causing so much pain.
I could not fathom how he was able to stand. His once supple topline was now a permanently frozen neck unable to extend to the ground for basic grazing. His teeth could no longer masticate any kind of food. He choked on the smallest bites. It happened so fast — A virus hit his system out of nowhere. Weakened by three days of gastroenteritis and unable to exercise, it only took a few more days for arthritis to take hold. We tried everything to help him adapt to the “new normal,” where retirement would be feasible with lifted buckets and state-of-the-art automatic feeding systems.
I kept asking myself the question, how will I know if it is time?
“He couldn’t stand up today,” my Trainer’s voice cracked on the other end of the phone. “It’s time to start thinking about…”
I stopped her mid-sentence. Today was not the day. He was happy, and that was my criteria. As long as he was happy, then I would do whatever it took to keep him comfortable. It never occurred to me that he could be happy AND suffering from starvation.
As I stood there in Harvey’s stall, hands-on his emaciated flanks, pushing his hallucinating teeth out of my hair, it suddenly hit me — Harvey had one focus, FOOD. Don’t get me wrong, Harvey had always been a food-obsessed horse, but tonight, he behaved like a starving animal.
I took his head in my hands, and he bowed his head before me in the February cold. As I scratched the oily spot just beneath his forelock, we began a conversation that I will never forget.
Harvey was my heart horse — soul mate, a partner in healing, a champion like me who sustained a career-ending injury only to be left alone in the wake of it all. Both of us were so afraid of abandonment, yet so deeply in need of genuine LOVE, we understood each other in ways that I have yet to find in another companion. He chose me, and I vowed to care for him unto death.
That day was upon us.
I placed my hand on Harvey’s giant warhorse heart, still beating proudly in his chest. Though an elderly frame of delicate ribs now replaced his swollen muscles, nothing could contain his powerful rhythm. It was a gift he had given to me so many times that it seemed almost automatic at this point. I would put my hand to his chest, and his heart would synchronize with mine. I could feel my nervous system come into balance, our hearts entrained, with pulse and blood pressure regulating to the beat of Arctic Monkeys. “Do I wanna know?”
It was time to answer Harvey’s questions. He needed to know what was happening inside of his body. Harvey did not know that he had reached the end of his life.
I ran my hands across the ridges and caverns of his now emaciated frame while reminding him of the incredible strength that transcends one’s physical being. I gently circled my hands in the soft swirls of his underbelly, where he twitched and jumped a little given the tenderness of the spot. My palms turned hot with awareness of undiagnosed inflammation deep inside his intestinal system. I couldn’t risk absorbing his illness into my body, so I paused long enough to help Harvey see that there was illness deep inside of his barrel, only to move my hands up his girth to his broad shoulder and back around his neck to a full horse hug.
We giggled together for a moment, and then we got very serious. I don’t remember exactly what I said, except I wanted him to know that he would never be alone. It was a promise that I made to him the day I signed his purchase paperwork — this was a lifetime purchase, and I would see him through until the day he passed on. Today was that day.
As I placed his halter on that giant warhorse face, I told him that we were going to walk to the apple tree, where we would meet the vet. He was happy again, as I don’t believe he was capable of holding onto the information that I had shared with him just moments ago.
I gently reassured him that I was with him — and I would be with him until his final moments. He dropped to the ground, and his once-mighty head now lay in my lap like a small child falling asleep at a summer picnic. My giant warhorse focused his liquid eye on mine one last time, exhaled, and he was gone.
Death doesn’t make sense in a vacuum of meaning. More than a year has passed, and I still struggle to grasp that Harvey is gone. I didn’t have the closure that I needed, since the pandemic hit just days after Harvey’s life came to a sudden end.
In the months since, I have been blessed with the grace of perspective — in my most desperate moments, after the utter devastation of divorce, when I needed to know that LOVE still existed and I was worthy of loving and being loved…I remembered….
…I was chosen by the most magnificent warhorse. LOVE found me, and I will never be the same.
Though Harvey may be gone, death did not get the last word. The heart of my warhorse still beats in my chest to the steady rhythm that was uniquely his, just as my healing journey continues to unfold, built upon a foundation of amazing grace.
