Meggie.

I have been putting off writing about this. When I went to my mom's yesterday it took me over an hour to walk over to the place they buried Megan. Seeing that huge spread of tore-up ground still didn't jar anything in me. It was like looking at a construction site before the rebar. I didn't know where her head was, if, maybe as I crouched there, I was really talking to her butt. I didn't know what to say. Like I hadn't known her these seventeen years. Like she hadn't done her best to raise me right, using every trick in her pony book to get me off her back and get herself back to the barn. So, I just said that I was proud to be a product of her schooling, sorry I hadn't been there for her in her old age the way she'd been there for me in my young years. And then I couldn't shut up. You saw me through divorced parents, twelve different addresses, third grade through my bachelor's degree, through wanting to be a professional rider, a vet, a cop, a teacher and then a firefighter. I've ran from you and chased after you. I've shared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies with you, and you've stolen your fair share as well. I've risked life and limb riding you loose in the pasture and we won that red ribbon down in Chehalis that summer. You've thrown me into mud puddles, fences, jumps, and soft grass. You've tried to knock my head off by running under low-hanging cedar limbs and take my legs off my cutting it too close to the barn posts. You let me wear spurs and carry a crop and only bucked every once in a while. You stopped slamming on the brakes at fences and started jumping over them. Then you realized you could eat the hay bales we tried to jump. You put up with every friend I put on your back and sent galloping up the driveway. You were the trustiest steed in poker-stabber-stick. Well, maybe not trusty, unless trusty means I could count on you to always stop and start snacking when I least expected it. You scared the shit out of me when you got sick and ended up needed surgery to unclog your dang guts, just because you were an equine vacuum cleaner and couldn't let any tiny piece of grain escape you, along with all the dirt it was laying in. I still remember coloring in the waiting room in those early hours, coloring like a psychopath while I waited for the surgeon to come out and show me a handful of the sand that had almost killed you. And then two days later, belly full of staples holding you shut, you were pulling the vet techs like they were full of helium when you'd spy a patch of grass in the hospital parking lot. Your star got wild and huge on your face, like a supernova and you were so aggressive about getting your udders scratched, single-minded to the end. I wish I'd spent more time with you, even if it was just scratching you. I still couldn't keep my seat if I hopped on you, me twice what I used to weigh and you ten years older. You'd still take me for a ride and swerve dangerously close to Jewel, knowing she'd try to kick you, and probably knowing just how you'd maneuver so I was the one that took the hoof. You were pretty quiet but your knicker was my favorite. I'm sorry that my kids will never meet you and I can only hope that I'll be able to find them a teacher half as good as you were. I don't think there's every been a scrappier, tougher-than-nails, verocious creature out there. You were the one, Megs. You raised me right and I owe you my childhood. All my love. I hope the grass is delicious wherever you are.