At home, Volare’s blanket lay crumpled on the ground where we had flung it off earlier in the day. I moved it into the old blanket bin. At feeding time, the other three horses seemed confused. They didn’t know where to go. Baleno stood alone in the pasture; his grazing buddy a ghost by his side.
A few weeks ago, the topic of my therapy session (yes, I admit it) veered away from its usual subject, my career, to the death of animals. I talked about Volare’s advancing age and his more and more frequent bouts with colic. I described how I couldn’t actually pinpoint anything wrong with him, but he just wasn’t “right.” My therapist told me that I should write about him. That I should start right away. It would help me to deal with the grief when the time came.

I didn’t do it. I became preoccupied with other things. I don’t know that I’ll be able to write about him now, either, other than this blog post. It’s a start, anyway.

I have done strange things in the past four days. I have lain in bed and eaten through a pound bag of M&Ms and nothing else for an entire day. I spiked my hot cocoa, something I’ve never, ever done in the past (is this how alcoholism begins?). On Saturday, I decided to try to leave the house. I had been in my pajamas for three days. Scot and I drove to a nearby Chinese restaurant but it was closed. I suddenly could not navigate making a left turn into traffic. I was paralyzed by the possibility of an accident. I am a good and assertive driver, but I had lost my ability to navigate the world. I understood, all of a sudden, why teenagers cut themselves to release the pain: I took three scalding hot showers on Saturday, although I had done nothing to get dirty—I had not ridden, I had not worked out, I had never even left my bed.

There is a small improvement today: I can go to my barn and spend a little time there, but after a couple of hours I need to come back inside. The empty stall, Baleno grazing alone, the bridle and saddle hanging in the tack room; his ghost grazing under the cottonwood. Yet I laughed when a friend told me about his bike flying off the roof of his car on Interstate 25. It was not charitable to laugh at his misfortune but it was an old cheap bike and I like physical comedy. That was a good moment.

I have read all the websites about grief and loss and mourning. I know I have to give myself time and forgiveness, that I, personally, was not responsible for his death although I have been responsible for his life for all but five of his 21 years. Together, Volare and I jumped big fences and galloped on the beach; we flew off banks and performed dressage tests. He impressed some big names: Anne Kursinki and Denny Emerson and Joe Fargis all liked him when we took lessons with them. He was the main reason I ended a bad relationship that was rapidly skidding toward a bad marriage (the man in question did not like the smell of horses on my clothes when I returned from the barn). Volare was why I moved to, and bought a farm in New Mexico: I wanted him to have his own place where he could graze. I only fell off him twice: both times I jumped ahead of him and he didn’t see his distance. He stopped rather than crash through a fence. He saved my butt. He modeled for many of the photographs in my book and for many magazine articles; he was the shoulder on which I cried over jobs and lost loves and just plain crappy days.

Early in my relationship with my now-husband, Scot (who is not “horsey” but loved Volare, too), he asked me that “me or the horse” question that any man involved with a horse-obsessed woman has to ask. I told him not to ever expect an answer. I knew I loved him and wanted to spend my life with him. I also knew that if it came down to it (as it had once before), I would always choose Volare. Since then the herd has grown and subtracted and grown again. In the years we’ve been together I’ve lost two other horses, but neither had the sting of this one.

Without “the big V,” life is, I am afraid to admit, simpler. Chores are quicker. I’m not worried about his lungs (he had a chronic breathing condition that required daily doses of Albuterol), or finding him dead in the pasture. The day before he died, he stood under the tree on my old dog Bradlee’s grave. I didn’t think anything of it, but perhaps the pup was ushering Volare over to the other side.

This was a day I had dreaded for a long time. It came, and it went. I miss him.

See more of Emily's blogs at: http://www.myhorse.com/blogs/emily_esterson/index.aspx