The Dream Hour
Mary tugs at her short, wavy hair. It's thick, but close cropped, leading the observer to wonder if it's not just a fashion choice. Her voice is warm and open as she tells me about the cancer. Like so many women I know, Mary had been diagnosed with breast cancer and has spent the better part of a year fighting for her health. "Last year was an awful one," she says ruefully, fingering her curls. But she doesn't mean the cancer. I ask her what could be more difficult than cancer and she laughs, says I won't understand.
Mary loves horses. She keeps three of them on her land, more if she had time. Two in her little herd are older and in failing health, she tells me. Her third and most favored horse is Dream Hour, a magnificent, young gelding lovingly nicknamed "Red." "Was," she says regretfully.
Mary recounts the tale; a month after her cancer diagnosis, she discovered her beloved horse twisting in agony on the ground, taken by a drastic case of colic. The vet was called out, but could do nothing. An hour passed. Mary stood by helplessly and, in a dreamlike state, watched as her favorite pet slipped away.
Mary was never able to master Red. Try as she did, Red remained headstrong and spirited. Yet his fire was contagious, and regardless of her thoroughbred's stubbornness, a strong bond existed between them. In a painful parallel, Mary watched the companion she tried yet failed to control slip away from her, all future opportunities taken away. She was left alone with her one remaining, and unwanted, challenge: cancer.
In that moment, Mary remembers, she felt helpless and overwhelmed with grief for her loss. For a month she had cried and feared about her own health; it was her battle and she knew it, had faced it. Now she bore an entirely different kind of loss. Mary teetered between her sweeping grief and the knowledge that indulging her pain would not erase what had happened.
"Cancer seems so much larger," I interject into Mary's stream of consciousness, knowing she was right, that I don't understand. I had recently watched two members of my family battle breast cancer; the outcome split with one recovering and the other inching closer to the end. But from Mary's expression, I saw that she did recognize the vast different between the diagnosis of cancer and the death of a pet. For her, the loss of Red enabled her to clarify her thoughts on mortality, teaching her to be less afraid of death. Since the news of her cancer, Mary had been operating under the daily realization that, despite her optimistic prognosis, her life might be in jeopardy. Seeing death touch not herself but another life close to her instead jolted her back to fully participating in daily life. She was still alive; she could still lose something dear to her. Those in her life, two or four legged, became more precious to her as she underwent the process of loss; an experience that made it easier for her to "get on with things," she shared.
So much of life is fluid, moving around us at such great speed that we often do not comprehend the finiteness of our own situations. Mary and Red are pieces of the patchwork in the greater fabric of life. Sometimes we survive simply by willing ourselves to move forward and, in doing so, move past it. That's what Mary did. "I had to," she says to me. And suddenly I do understand.
