Good Bye Nessa

On March 22, 2008 at 9:30pm my Nessa died after a six week long illness. She was 36 years old. I could write pages and pages of things about my Nessa, but what it all boils down to is she was one of the best things that ever happened to me. She was brave, she was tough, and she took better care of me than any human ever has. She gave her all without ever taking. It was an honor to care for her in the last weeks of her life. That meant I could finally give something back to her.

She was so sad when she came to us ten years ago. Her beautiful little face showed it, her spirit, too. When she found herself in her very own stall with lots of bedding and food that she didn’t have to fight for, she was very appreciative. Slowly, little by little, her tentative spirit grew stronger. A fire came back into her eyes.

For ten years she carried me, fearlessly, on her bare back because a saddle hurt her. She led the way. All other horses were confident in her presence. Her spirit soothed their’s.

Please keep an open mind here. Nessa gave me the message she was never going to die. Obviously I misread the message because she did, in fact, die in this system. But, when we found her on that last night of her life, she was deeply in REM sleep. We could not wake her, but we could tell she was galloping in her dreams! We finally managed to wake her and get her on her feet, but with great indignation. She would lay back down and fall asleep again, only to gallop back to that place in her dreams, a place where she was young again; galloping alongside the daughter she referred to as “Baby.”

After getting her on her feet again and out of the barn (we wanted to avoid the last indignity of dragging her dead body out of her stall – very hard on all of us), she just wanted to lay back down to sleep again. It was like the country song “I was almost there.” In the song a homeless man is awakened and says, “Why did you wake me: I was just swimming in Calico Creek, was just sitting under a cottonwood tree, just got stung by a honey bee, I was almost there.” I think that’s what Nessa was telling us – “Let me go, I am almost there.”

For six weeks I waited for her time. It was now her time. She was going to die that night with or without our help. The vet arrived just as she was going down for the last time and we sent her on her way.

My precious Nessa.

She galloped off into the future to the field of grass where her daughter “Baby” met her sometime after the resurrection. Six days later at 9:30am as I was watching “Ellen” on TV I got this profound feeling of peace, love, and gratitude from somewhere. I recognized Nessa’s message as she had been sending them to me for the last en years. She was there. She never died after all. My Nessa.