Tara: Love Beyond Boundaries
Leigh Shambo,
MSW
For all
of us, human or horse, significant loss and the grief that
accompany it are part of life. I will always remember my first
encounter with grief: the sudden and unexpected death of the
beloved horse companion of my teenage years,
Tara. With her I learned how
it felt to be seen, and found more than good enough; in her
reflection I discovered my Self. And after giving me these
powerful lessons in loving, she initiated me into the mysteries
of death and the redemptive nature of grief.
Tara was my first full size
horse, and we found each other when I was 14 years old. I had
just sold my first horse, a Welsh cob named Little Bit, which
was heart-wrenching, but together with my best friend Gail who
also had a cob-sized gelding, we knew we were ready for ‘big’
horses. Little Bit found a good home, I cried my tears, and
then to his purchase price I added my baby-sitting money and
went looking to upgrade.
....
At a nearby livery stable the owner
assured me that he had several suitable horses, calm and
reliable enough for a young rider. My eyes swept across the
crowded paddocks in anticipation. In the furthest corner, a
high headed horse with a delicate dished face stared intently at
me. The chestnut mare and I locked eyes and our gaze held. I
asked to see her, and the livery owner told me, “You don’t want
her.” Oh, but I did!
I
insisted on riding her. She was full of fire, yet as soft and
responsive as a kitten to my lightest signals. My heart was
instantly and irrevocably captured. I rode a couple of the
other horses to humor the stable owner, who continued trying to
talk me into plodding animals that were earthbound and clumsy in
comparison to my new love. Meanwhile the mare continued to
stare at me from the hitching post where she was tied. Finally
the man shrugged and took my money. She was mine!
I
suppose in reality she was a plain-looking sorrel, with two
white socks behind and a narrow blaze on her face. She came
with no name and no known history, although we could tell from
her teeth that she was in her late teens. This lack of a past
made her an orphan horse, and I was metaphorically an orphan kid
in my moderately dysfunctional family of origin. I named her
Tara, a word that I knew meant “earth”, because of her brown
coat and because the word signified all that I held most dear.
To me
she was the most beautiful being I had ever encountered, and I
fell at once into an obsessed, unbounded teenage love. I
wondered if I was her, or she was me; I was astonished
that we existed in separate bodies. Tara returned my adoration,
meeting me at the pasture gate and showering me with attentive,
solicitous horse gestures. Once I mounted, our bodies were no
longer isolated, and the puzzle of seemingly distinct bodies was
solved, at least temporarily.
Tara was proud and full of
fiery energy. Ours was the pure and sensual physicality shared
by a spirited, “hot” horse and a daredevil teenage girl.
Together we explored every far reach of the Illinois countryside
where I grew up. We rarely walked: her slowest gait was a
prancing half walk-half trot, as if she wanted to break free of
the earth she was named for, and her fastest gait was— like the
wind!
Horses
not only offer us their friendship, they offer us a framework
which supports human relationships as well. Gail had found for
herself an equine friend named Kemosabi, and they were often our
companions and partners in adventure. For Gail too, the horses
were a refuge from family complexities and pain. We were
rebellious, wild children striving to grow up in families too
preoccupied with survival to nourish our spirits and souls. Our
horses took care of us in every crazy adventure; at the same
time, taking care of our horses guided us toward the grown up
world of responsibility. We ditched high school classes in
order to go riding, but tended to the needs of Tara and Kemo
diligently and without complaint or resentment.
So it
was not just Tara whose neck often absorbed the hot tears of my
confusion and isolation from my family; often Gail stood by as
well, mutely holding Kemo on lead. Much like my horse, she
felt my pain without words, and simply offered me her presence.
Thirty-five years later, Gail is still one of my most trusted
friends, in spite of the many miles that have separated us in
our adult lives.
Gail and
I graduated from high school, and she moved away to join her
boyfriend in the college town where she would also attend
school. It was late in the summer of that year when I got an
emergency call from the farm where Tara lived. During the night, she had wandered off, plowing through a
couple of wire fences in the process, and instead of staying
close to the other horses, they found her in the woods, alone,
disoriented and uncoordinated. They had already called the vet,
and my father drove me out to the farm to meet him there. My
beautiful, fiery mare was staggering and covered with blood from
the fences she had not even seen as she walked through them. It
took two of us to hold her so that she could be sedated for
tests and to treat her wounds.
My
father cancelled work, and sat with me all day in the hot sun as
Tara lay flat on the ground, unconscious. We kept the flies off her, we
wiped her with cool water, and my dad held my hand as I sat
stunned with helplessness and horror, trying to hold on to
hope. By the end of the day, it became obvious that there was
no hope—when the sedatives wore off,
Tara’s heart-rending efforts to struggle to her feet were unsuccessful, and
I gave the vet permission to euthanize her. An autopsy revealed
that cancer of the liver had metastasized to her blood,
affecting her brain and neurological function. I could not
watch the autopsy, and it was a mistake to glance back for a
last look at my beloved as my father helped me into the car.
The vet was incising and peeling back her hide, still as rich
and brown as the earth she had come from.
At home,
I went to my room and stayed there for days, crying, not eating,
and contemplating suicide as I tried to come to terms with a
world that could rip away in an instant what had also been given
in that instant when my eyes had first found Tara’s. I’m not
sure if it was wisdom that caused my parents to leave me alone
in my suffering, more likely they had simply returned to their
standard preoccupation with their own lives, but the solitude
allowed me full immersion into my grief, my shock, and my
loneliness. I emptied my well of tears over and over again.
Such
crying cleanses the soul and prepares us for new insights; I
believe it was on the fourth day of my grieving that I suddenly
felt a great peace, and
Tara’s presence literally
entered the room. I could feel her, imagine her in vivid detail
and even smell her unique horsy odor. These sensations brought
not another wave of grief, but an unexpected and overwhelming
wave of gratitude and reassurance. Was she really there?
The
thought occurred to me with startling clarity: only one thing
could be worse than this loss. The only thing harder to bear
would be having never known her, loved her, ridden the wind upon
her, felt the eagerness of her prancing hooves as she waited for
my whispered “let’s go, girl!”. Never having felt her wrap me
in her neck and nuzzle into me as I cried. The redemption in
grief is that loving is worth it. Only deep love brings
deep grief, and that gives us the courage to say yes to loving
again, to loving as deeply as possible again, and again.
Author
Leigh Shambo,
MSW is a
clinical therapist and educator whose
first career was horse training and instruction. Leigh
is widely recognized for her articulation of the
horse-human bond and its application in therapeutic and
learning programs. She is the founder and lead
therapist for
Human-Equine Alliances for Learning
(HEAL), a
non-profit charitable organization that supports
equine-assisted services and programs for healing,
personal growth and riding/training.
Leigh is an Advanced
Facilitator
graduate of Linda Kohanov's Epona Center
apprenticeship
program and is EAGALA
certified.
