It's amazing how subtle a mother can call to ask why you haven't called and then displace you with terrible news. Tells you one of your old best friends is in ICU, is in tremendous pain, is lucky to be alive. Tells you that while riding a horse, something that you and her have done for the past 8 years of your lives together, she had an accident. She had a hoof go through her rib cage and collapse a lung. And that fractured nearly half her ribs.


And then she tries to transition, tell you to prepare to sell stuff at a booth in June... but your mind is racing and you wonder, "Why?" and "How?" Death walks softly and has no agenda but rather dances that path of silent chaos and disorder. I want to feel grateful that she's alive but I also want to ask, what will happen now? Her life is horses and this is not merely something someone gets back up from. Sometimes they say a real love is going back to something even after its defeated you. Kristen would do that.

And all I can pray is she doesn't.