Loss.

Dear J,

I went to feed the horses this morning at 7:30 am, and got quite a surprise. There stood Cheyenne with a brand new baby. Big and leggy, he was a bay with four white socks below the black, a large white star and stripe down his face, and he had a glass eye (blue) on the left side. I was terribly excited – I tore up to the house and hollered “We have another horse in the pen!” My mom, nephew, niece, and eventually dad all came to take a look. A beautiful baby.

I went to feed the new baby this morning at 5 am, and got quite a surprise. Somehow the beautiful baby of the morning was replaced by an identical one that had died in the straw and already turned cold.

You see, he wouldn’t take to his mother, he just couldn’t seem to nurse.

We had a neighbor come out earlier in the evening when it was clear there was a problem, and the neighbor was so helpful – he tried to show the baby how to find the nipple and nurse, but he just would or could not. We tried a bottle with honey water, and milk from the mom. Eventually the neighbor left, and the baby fell under the mom, exhausted. I knew then he was going to die, but this was her first baby and I didn’t want him to, so I reached under her belly, pulled him out and to his feet, and started to cry. I wrapped my arms around him, ran my hands across his little back, feeling his spine, on down and over his rump to his soft tail stub, and tried again to get him to nurse.

“Come on, you can do it,” I said. I willed him to do it, my mom willed him to do it, his mom willed him to do it. Much later the vet came, did her best, but I already knew it would be hours before it was over. This wasn’t meant to be.

Maybe I should have tried harder to keep the flies off of the mom during the day – then she wouldn’t have been brushing him away when he tried to nurse earlier. I work myself into the corner – I failed again. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to experience death and life through the sticky and dirty lessons taught by beloved farm animals. The bottle fed lamb you hold as it eagerly grabs at the bottle, only to see its life gone in the morning. The kittens that the mother left to die. The dogs, hit by cars that travel down the country roads too fast. Coming upon your horse you’ve had for years, seeing it dead on the ground having left on one last ride without you. Knowing a mare had carried a glass eyed foal for so many months, only to give and lose him in a day.

It makes your heart an inch softer, your sense of the wind more visceral, your understanding of the passing of time one second greater. To want to keep something alive knowing you will have to let it go, saying conflicting prayers in the back of you mind about saving a life and letting it end softly. Understanding that grief isn’t reserved for humans when you see a mare silent over her lost one.

I think I’ll call him Frank. Plain old Frank. After old Blue Eyes himself. The name sounds like he was around longer than 24 hours. We’ll bury him in the morning.

I guess that I’ll head to bed now, but sleep is hard to come by with a heavy heart and burning eyes. It’s sad to have lost something new and anticipated. It’s sad to sweat and cry for a grave. It’s something that will be clear later. Thanks, J., for your part in the journey that took me to this point. Watch out for Frank, now, you hear? You’ll meet him in a few hours. The sun’s coming up just now.