All my hopes that Kaheka would survive vanished when I arrived at the barn that morning in early December. When I opened the barn door and saw him, my spirit was hit with a chilling blast of icey metallic energy, rigid with disappointment and sadness. I could tell his day had come. He had been up and down for the past 2 weeks periodically showing some hope but finally yesterday, getting up seemed no longer an option.
I’ve been surprised numerous times in the past 35 years by unexpected miracles even when death seemed imminent.This day though, my heart felt squeezed with grief as the reality of his death was so blatantly announced with a sense of finality.
Kaheka was my favorite buddy horse. He was actually everybody’s buddy especially the mares who adored him. He was safe and caring, a good guy, the kind of male friend every human woman would want.
He was also a healer. Through the years he was always the one who showed up when any horse was under the weather, and they seemed to get better just knowing he was around.
That was the case with Mano who had come to me in poor health. I remember the night when he had a high fever. I stayed up all night with him at the barn; but by the time the sky gave soft hints of early morning light, I was exhausted. I felt I couldn’t leave him, but there was no warm and comfortable place for me to curl up for respite. As despair started to clutch at me, I checked on Mano again. To my surprise, there beside him in the next stall was Kaheka with his neck stretched over the dividing fence; his beautiful head lay gently on Mano’s back. My eyes misted as I stood there in awe knowing instantly that this was a Divine gesture. Mano was being tended by a healer of his own kind. Knowing that, I could go home to sleep in peace as the warmth of love and comaraderie slowly melted over me. That was my Kaheka, the helper and healer for not only Mano, but also for me.
Today, Kaheka was the one needing to be lovingly tended. His lanky thoroughbred body that had once been so delightful to my artist’s eye was now broken and defeated as he lay helpless on the ground refusing to eat or drink.
I knew what to do, or so I thought. Kaheka had always loved having his tail massaged and often when another horse was in trouble, Kaheka would remind me to work their tails. But today his tail lay lifeless. When I picked it up, there was no response. It was limp and dead to the touch. My heart sank. I quickly moved to the emergency point between his nostrils but he moved his head definitively away from my touch each time I tried. This was so out of character for his usual affectionate self, the most physically responsive of any of my horses.
In the past, my determination to alleviate discomfort prompted me to keep trying to do what I thought would help no matter the resistance. This time, however, I asked Kaheka where he would like to be touched.
In response to my question, I suddenly felt my dad’s presence who had passed many years earlier. But now he was here with me in the barn. My memory was flooded with reminders from the day he was dying.
I remembered the conflict I was having at that time. I so much had wanted to make Dad comfortable: massaging his feet, holding his hand, stroking his forehead, gently giving his arm a squeeze, or giving a squeeze of water in his mouth, and letting him know I was there with him. But I noticed that for some reason, Dad seemed edgy and restless with my touch; an uncomfortable observation I was not really wanting to acknowledge. I battled inwardly with what culturally I thought I should be doing in contrast with what I was awkwardly allowing myself to observe. Dad did not want to be touched! In retrospect it is clear; at the time, it meant letting go of my preconceived ideas so it was not so clear.
I wish I could say that I abandoned my own agenda immediately with Dad, but I did not. I was able to significantly modify it and for that step, I am grateful. It was only much later after he passed that I began to understand that he was transitioning in a very peaceful and beautiful way and every human touch interrupted that process and would bring him back to the earth plane.
Even harp music played by a live harpist hired to provide soothing, heavenly music turned out to be more for the benefit of the family and friends than for Dad. He became quietly agitated though I didn’t want to believe what I was sensing and which didn’t seem obvious to others at the time. It didn’t fit our storybook narrative.
As Kaheka lay in the stall at my feet, still attempting unsuccessfully to get up, Dad was reminding me that Kaheka did not want to be touched. Period. Unlike my partial response to Dad when he was dying, this time I got it fully. I stopped touching Kaheka in order to honor his need not to be touched as I let go of my own need to touch. In a dramatic moment I will never forget, I heard “audible” words in that other-worldly way that came directly from Kaheka’s being, “I want to experience this process fully and completely without any mitigation.” Those words reverberated within me in an internal Divine silence, then went straight to my heart like a strategically propelled arrow. There was no denying it. Kaheka had spoken.
Turning over a bucket for a stool, I sat down nearby and started to write: “Beautiful Kaheka, I want to go through this with you, and as you requested, to allow you your discomfort, to allow you your struggle and your process without trying to fix it and make it easier.”
I took a deep breath and laid my journal and pen down beside me. I wanted to experience fully what was to come, without distraction, no matter how difficult.
Standing nearby was Tal, Kaheka’s companion horse, very calmly munching hay, untouched by any sense of trauma. The three of us were tucked in the stall together, under the warmth and protection of the barn that was well marinated in its history with animal and human passings. Quite the sacred stage for Kaheka’s departure.
Through the years, I had become aware that Tal, Kaheka’s buddy, was drawn to people who were grieving. He seemed to have an innate understanding of death and other forms of separation. This day while helping to peacefully usher Kaheka, his last remaining horse buddy, onward to his next world, he was being a role model for me that this was a natural process, not a traumatic event. It brought me a sense of comfort that Kaheka, who was being escorted, and I as participating witness, were not alone.
Along with my Dad’s reminders about not touching, Kaheka’s clear messages to experience fully the dying process without mitigation, and Tal’s calming presence, I became aware of a veterinarian from my past. Years ago when another horse, Apolinaire, was dying, I had called her to help his process. Today she seemed to be peering in during these moments with Kaheka. I remembered that as she was driving from an hour away she had said with a reassuring confidence, “I want you to know that it is really ok to let an animal die naturally,” said she, as if a prophetess. Apolinaire did indeed die naturally, before her arrival. Those words once again brought an affirmation of my journey with Kaheka into the mysterious process of dying…naturally.
I sat with Kaheka with nothing to do except just to “be” as he was finding his way out of the constrictions of his earthly body. The herd patriarch many years ago had taught me how to stand nearby side by side without touching, and with no agenda other than just being. This day, I sat nearby.
Sitting there alone, I did not feel alone. I felt gratitude for the presence of all…Tal, Dad, the vet, Kaheka himself, and the spirits of all that had gone before on this ranch, and in particular those who had departed nearby in this same barn.
Along with the tears of gratitude that began to gently flow came a powerful rising up of defiance in me to the “ghosts” of living humans that were standing afar in the barn shrouded in a condemning and dirty haze. They were the voices of human judgment, humans I knew, for allowing this horse to “suffer.” Instead of my usual cowering under their real or imagined condemnation, I suddenly saw how pitifully empty of any understanding and experience regarding the amazing unfolding of this event that they were.They did not know what I knew from my years of experience being mentored by these mystical beings. They had no knowledge of Kaheka’s final request, nor, sadly, no experience of the magic of this Divine process that humans so quickly push away with the insertion of a needle when another possibility may still exist. If these otherwise lovely people had gotten their way, they would have robbed not only me but Kaheka of this evolving and profound experience. As I realized this, they and their imagined voices suddenly shriveled into small, insignificant, and pathetic beings as they no longer held power over me!
Simultaneously with that powerful release, I experienced an exhilaration from a mix of all emotions converging in the moment. I felt Kaheka’s spirit fill the whole barn which I now visualize as a soft golden shimmer. It became more intense as it headed in my direction. It moved around like a person coming from behind to embrace me and wrapped itself warmly and snuggly around me in a hug so real I will never be the same.
I caught my breath as I was emersed in an unforgettable euphoria. During those moments, I am now understanding as I write, that it was Kaheka’s euphoria that I was feeling. In his passing he freed me from human judgments of our journey together, lovingly embraced me from behind and brought me along with him as he crossed the bridge into eternal freedom and love. I rode with him as he left his body in one of the most powerful experiences in my life.
At the time, not fully understanding the contradiction of what I was experiencing and Kaheka’s body appearing to struggle on the ground in front of me, I was perplexed and wished him the same comfort that soothed me. I was told and now understand that Kaheka had already transcended. What remained was only a physical shell moving through the instinctual letting-go.
As his body struggled to get up, his long thoroughbred legs took over and began to gallop away while he still was on the ground, a familiar phenomenon I have experienced with the death of my various horses. His body was letting go; the end was near. Then, in an orgasmic gesture, his body released into the final forever calm. It was done. Kaheka had completed his 30 years on this planet, 22 of those with me.
I sat in the stillness.
Kaheka and I had merged, he forever a part of me. And in his dying, he had taken me on one hell of a ride.
The Mystic Horse Chronicle 