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which_chickI was thinking last night about happy endings. They're bullshit. There are no happy endings.
Stories always end in death. If a story doesn't end in death, that's because it's a story you've walked away from before the dead part happens. The dead part happens every time.
Every single damn time.
All of the times.
And, it would seem, this time too.
I don't do well with death, not sure if anyone does. And so, in an exemplary not dealing with things well manner wherein it is clear that I consider my grief more important than everyone else's (at least to me), I've written an apology to my dead, blind, baby horse for her regrettably short and less-than-ideal life and my failure to have it go better than it did.
This is probably among the most useless bits of writing on the planet. My dead, blind baby horse cannot read and I am well aware of that. You can Captain Obvious all you want, I write shit in spite of rationality, diarrhea of the keyboard. I do it to let me feel better. (It never works, but I do it anyway.) Come along for the ride, why don't you?
I'm so sorry, Patapsco. You were a wonderful baby. You were beautiful and perfect and I loved you a lot. I think "besotted" was the go-to phrase for that state of affairs. You were absolutely everything I ever wanted in a baby horse, even your color, which I mocked gently from the beginning because wanting things too much means they will certainly be taken from you in the most painful way possible. I hoped, silently, that if I pretended hard enough that I didn't want a red baby, the universe would not know to take you from me. (I didn't fool anyone.)
I wanted only the best for you and I am terribly sorry that what you got instead was a tumble down the hill at birth, orphaning, renal failure, blindness, and death.
I wish things had been different.
I tried hard to make things be different.
Trys carried you up the hill the evening you were born and I sat with you the entire first night of your life, July 12, milking your mother and feeding you from a bottle while I flexed your legs and feet into workable positions. The awful start, I fixed that. I spent your first night on earth on a lawn chair in the barn, listening to the tick of the fencer, with sticky, colostrum-covered hands, jerking awake to the cell phone alarm every thirty minutes so that I could get milk into you. When you got to where you could stand and eat on your own, the day after you were born, I was so proud of you.
You went outside and learned to run. You played with your buddy foal. It was pretty good. You learned early halter lessons, how to lead and tie. But summer wore into fall and your dam got thinner and thinner and stopped eating. No matter what I tried, I could not make her well.
I kept her as long as I could, for your sake and mine, but I had to let her go in the end. I'd started you on milk replacer pellets (they were really expensive) and found you an auntie to keep you company, but you were only two and a half months old when I took your mom from you. I am sorry I did not do better than that for you, but I owed her, too. And I paid up. I did right by my nasty old bay mare even though it hurt like hell. Nick got a fairly-timed, humane death, the best ending, the one that we hope they receive.
A month later, you caught leptospirosis, about two days after I sent off your registration paperwork. We gave you antibiotics and steroids but the lepto ate your left eye and you went into renal failure.
We put IV fluids in you to help your kidneys get better, and they did, though it was a very scary period before you improved. After the renal failure adventure, we put IV oxytetracycline into you for a week to really, truly kill the lepto. And that seemed to work.
You brightened up considerably. You adapted to life as a one-eyed horse. You put on weight. You got taller, growin' like a bad weed. You ate like a trooper, plowed through all the expensive milk-replacer pellets I was worried you wouldn't live to finish. You made it to four months old. It was November by then and I bought you a winter blanket in navy because I didn't know what color "excalibur" was supposed to be and they were out of the "berry" that I thought would clash amusingly with your red-headedness. It was a little big for you, but I hoped you'd grow into it. When you were five months old, your DNA kit came (for registration) so I yanked out some hair from your mane and sent it off, happy you were still alive.
You made six months (go, baby horse, go!) and your registration papers came back in the mail, proof that you were who we said you were. And you were still alive. I was so happy that you had made it that far. I even emailed the stallion owner to let her know you'd made it to six months so that she could be happy, too.
And Sunday, Feb. 3, you had a snot nose. We went to the vet and got you antibiotics that night. Shot you up with 'em. You looked better on Monday, less snot, breathing better. Tuesday... Tuesday morning you did not come up for food. By the evening both your eyes were swollen shut like the left one had been before it went blind, back before the renal failure thing. We got more drugs for Wednesday -- IV oxytet (again, we still had some leftover from before) and steroids for the swelling.
But after the swelling went down on Thursday to where we could see your eyeball again, you could not see us... or the walls of your deluxe apartment in the barn (sung to the tune of the theme from The Jeffersons). You were cheerful and enthusiastic about your chow, talkative as always, but you could not see a damn thing. And so you did not see seven months old. (That would have been next Tuesday.)
I am so, so sorry.
And you are still dead, no matter how sorry I am.
I really would have loved to see what color red you turned out to be, with your oddly light mane and tail so full of white hairs. (You got that from your mother, who had speckled white hairs on her flanks.) You were whip-smart and very expressive -- you had SO many opinions and so much enthusiasm for expressing them. You were a bright and lively character from the get-go.
I'm so sorry.
You were beautiful when you were displeased about having to learn to tie.
You were beautiful when you walked toward me in my favorite picture of you.
Hell, you were beautiful when you smelt of sulfur from the rain rot treatment and when you were staggering around with an IV bag running into you. You were beautiful all of the times and you made my heart glad while you were here.
I am so sorry it turned out this way. I tried really, really hard to make it so that you could have a good life, but in the end you wound up with a life where you were left to fall down a hill as a neonate, orphaned at two and a half months, infected with lepto, beset by kidney failure, and blinded by an autoimmune reaction so that you tottered blindly into the walls of your stall for a couple of days while I worked on comprehending your total blindness and gathered up the nerve to have you shot.
And that, poor dead blind baby horse, that feels a hell of a lot like I failed you.
I am so sorry.
Stories always end in death. If a story doesn't end in death, that's because it's a story you've walked away from before the dead part happens. The dead part happens every time.
Every single damn time.
All of the times.
And, it would seem, this time too.
I don't do well with death, not sure if anyone does. And so, in an exemplary not dealing with things well manner wherein it is clear that I consider my grief more important than everyone else's (at least to me), I've written an apology to my dead, blind, baby horse for her regrettably short and less-than-ideal life and my failure to have it go better than it did.
This is probably among the most useless bits of writing on the planet. My dead, blind baby horse cannot read and I am well aware of that. You can Captain Obvious all you want, I write shit in spite of rationality, diarrhea of the keyboard. I do it to let me feel better. (It never works, but I do it anyway.) Come along for the ride, why don't you?
I'm so sorry, Patapsco. You were a wonderful baby. You were beautiful and perfect and I loved you a lot. I think "besotted" was the go-to phrase for that state of affairs. You were absolutely everything I ever wanted in a baby horse, even your color, which I mocked gently from the beginning because wanting things too much means they will certainly be taken from you in the most painful way possible. I hoped, silently, that if I pretended hard enough that I didn't want a red baby, the universe would not know to take you from me. (I didn't fool anyone.)
I wanted only the best for you and I am terribly sorry that what you got instead was a tumble down the hill at birth, orphaning, renal failure, blindness, and death.
I wish things had been different.
I tried hard to make things be different.
Trys carried you up the hill the evening you were born and I sat with you the entire first night of your life, July 12, milking your mother and feeding you from a bottle while I flexed your legs and feet into workable positions. The awful start, I fixed that. I spent your first night on earth on a lawn chair in the barn, listening to the tick of the fencer, with sticky, colostrum-covered hands, jerking awake to the cell phone alarm every thirty minutes so that I could get milk into you. When you got to where you could stand and eat on your own, the day after you were born, I was so proud of you.
You went outside and learned to run. You played with your buddy foal. It was pretty good. You learned early halter lessons, how to lead and tie. But summer wore into fall and your dam got thinner and thinner and stopped eating. No matter what I tried, I could not make her well.
I kept her as long as I could, for your sake and mine, but I had to let her go in the end. I'd started you on milk replacer pellets (they were really expensive) and found you an auntie to keep you company, but you were only two and a half months old when I took your mom from you. I am sorry I did not do better than that for you, but I owed her, too. And I paid up. I did right by my nasty old bay mare even though it hurt like hell. Nick got a fairly-timed, humane death, the best ending, the one that we hope they receive.
A month later, you caught leptospirosis, about two days after I sent off your registration paperwork. We gave you antibiotics and steroids but the lepto ate your left eye and you went into renal failure.
We put IV fluids in you to help your kidneys get better, and they did, though it was a very scary period before you improved. After the renal failure adventure, we put IV oxytetracycline into you for a week to really, truly kill the lepto. And that seemed to work.
You brightened up considerably. You adapted to life as a one-eyed horse. You put on weight. You got taller, growin' like a bad weed. You ate like a trooper, plowed through all the expensive milk-replacer pellets I was worried you wouldn't live to finish. You made it to four months old. It was November by then and I bought you a winter blanket in navy because I didn't know what color "excalibur" was supposed to be and they were out of the "berry" that I thought would clash amusingly with your red-headedness. It was a little big for you, but I hoped you'd grow into it. When you were five months old, your DNA kit came (for registration) so I yanked out some hair from your mane and sent it off, happy you were still alive.
You made six months (go, baby horse, go!) and your registration papers came back in the mail, proof that you were who we said you were. And you were still alive. I was so happy that you had made it that far. I even emailed the stallion owner to let her know you'd made it to six months so that she could be happy, too.
And Sunday, Feb. 3, you had a snot nose. We went to the vet and got you antibiotics that night. Shot you up with 'em. You looked better on Monday, less snot, breathing better. Tuesday... Tuesday morning you did not come up for food. By the evening both your eyes were swollen shut like the left one had been before it went blind, back before the renal failure thing. We got more drugs for Wednesday -- IV oxytet (again, we still had some leftover from before) and steroids for the swelling.
But after the swelling went down on Thursday to where we could see your eyeball again, you could not see us... or the walls of your deluxe apartment in the barn (sung to the tune of the theme from The Jeffersons). You were cheerful and enthusiastic about your chow, talkative as always, but you could not see a damn thing. And so you did not see seven months old. (That would have been next Tuesday.)
I am so, so sorry.
And you are still dead, no matter how sorry I am.
I really would have loved to see what color red you turned out to be, with your oddly light mane and tail so full of white hairs. (You got that from your mother, who had speckled white hairs on her flanks.) You were whip-smart and very expressive -- you had SO many opinions and so much enthusiasm for expressing them. You were a bright and lively character from the get-go.
I'm so sorry.
You were beautiful when you were displeased about having to learn to tie.
You were beautiful when you walked toward me in my favorite picture of you.
Hell, you were beautiful when you smelt of sulfur from the rain rot treatment and when you were staggering around with an IV bag running into you. You were beautiful all of the times and you made my heart glad while you were here.
I am so sorry it turned out this way. I tried really, really hard to make it so that you could have a good life, but in the end you wound up with a life where you were left to fall down a hill as a neonate, orphaned at two and a half months, infected with lepto, beset by kidney failure, and blinded by an autoimmune reaction so that you tottered blindly into the walls of your stall for a couple of days while I worked on comprehending your total blindness and gathered up the nerve to have you shot.
And that, poor dead blind baby horse, that feels a hell of a lot like I failed you.
I am so sorry.
