Chapter Two - If I Only Knew . . .
When I boarded that airplane and flew to Ontario, I was extremely upset about leaving my friends, my family and especially my lover. I realized that I was leaving home for the very first time and I was moving two thousand miles away, so I was actually feeling somewhat homesick even before I reached Toronto. However at the same time, I was elated to be heading off to new territory with the chance to learn to do the one thing that I had always wanted. In other words I was a very muddled young man.
Luckily for me there was several students arriving at the airport at nearly the same time, all bound for the University of Guelph, so the school had arranged for a bus to transport us there. Without that bus and the guide who rode with us, I would have wasted a lot of time finding my way there and I wouldn't have been known enough to have found my way to Mills Hall, the men's residence where I would be living for most of the next four years.
When I found my room, I met my roommate, who was a second year student and familiar with the campus. After I'd unpacked, he took me out for a short tour and showed me around. Only a short distance west of our residence was a three-story brick building, the Ontario Veterinary College, a building funded by James Archibald and also the place where I would register for most of my classes. Almost due south of Mills Hall was Massey Hall, which was the library and the place where I would be working in order to pay for my room and board. After our short walking tour, Jason, my new roomy and I went for something to eat. It was while we were eating that the emotions of the day as well as the long flight caught up to me. I made a long distance phone call home to let my folks know that I'd arrived safely, then I went to bed.
During the next month, I seldom had any time to be homesick, well except for the time following those letters from home. Actually I got letters from Mom, Dad, my sister and Myrna quite regularly, but after a few months I'd settled in and was happy to hear from them.
Then one evening, I got a phone call from Mom on the floor phone at the residence. Myrna's father had been hurt in an accident and Dad had been slightly injured while helping him. Dad wasn't seriously injured, but Myrna's dad had been flown to the University Hospital in Edmonton. That was actually the point in time when the letters from Myrna began to grow longer, but they also grew farther apart.
Myrna's family had to sell the farm and used the money to buy a smaller place, not far from Calgary. My sister gained a fiance about then and when I went home the next spring for the wedding, I found that my sister and her hubby had actually managed to buy Myrna's family's place with his family's help.
I saw Myrna and her parents at my sister's wedding, but since I had a summer job working in Algonquin Park, I was only home for a few days, so had very little chance to see them for any length of time. In fact over the next year I seldom received letters from Myrna, but my letters to her were just as infrequent, and I never saw her on those few times when I did manage to make it home. Then late in my second year I received an invitation to her wedding. I suppose I should have expected it, but I didn't and I'll admit that I was relieved when I found I'd be unable to be there for the ceremony.
Up until then, I'd never seriously dated, but Myrna's marriage changed my attitude and by the time I'd finished four years of veterinary training, I was married as well. In fact, by the time I moved back to start a veterinarian practice in my old hometown, my wife, Sandra, was expecting. The strange thing was that my son, Donald Jacob, was born in the same room and even in the same bed where I'd been born. We'd been visiting the farm and I'd been checking Dad's cattle while Sandra visited with Mom. Sandra had thought she strained herself slightly, so she'd gone to the bedroom to lie down for a bit.
When Sandra realized that she was in labour, she'd called Mom. Mom called the doctor first, then called down to the barn to get us. By the time I got there, the baby was on the way. I'll be honest, Mom managed the delivery while I dithered like a fool. Dad told me afterward that both he and Mom expected me to take over, but I simply couldn't do it for some reason. The doctor got there in time to tie off the umbilical cord and give me a rough time, then we moved both Sandra and our new son to the hospital.
We lived and worked in my hometown for about twenty-five years. In that time, Sandra and I raised a son, grew apart, then got divorced. Those years of slogging around in the snow and slush during the prairie winters had its effects on my health. I was starting to find it harder to keep clear of bronchial infections. So, after the divorce, I sold my practice in the old hometown, then moved out to the coast.
My son soon joined me there. He'd trained as a vet as well and I soon learned to depend on him a lot. In fact I felt that he might be growing into a better vet than I had ever been. We went into partnership and bought out an established veterinary clinic in Saanich on Vancouver Island.
Being on Vancouver Island meant that the weather was a lot better than it had been on the prairies and since we expected to do a lot less large animal work, life would be a lot easier. However once we had moved, the local people soon got to know that we knew our way around the treatment of horses and there were a lot of horses in the area. That meant we were soon developing a decent business with the various riding stables and the general horse loving community on the peninsula.
I'm not trying to imply that we only had dealings with horse people. In fact most of our patients were family pets - dogs, cats, and all manner of other small animals. Actually after the visit of one young woman with an old basset hound, my son seemed dreamy eyed for two days. When I asked him about it, he couldn't explain, other than to say that she was pretty and that she impressed him a lot. To be honest, since he'd always been a bit shy, I hoped she'd come back soon, and that he'd ask her out. I felt he needed a woman in his life.
Late one afternoon we got a call from M&J stables, one of the few pony breeders on the island. We'd never been there before, but somehow they had heard of us and wanted us to look at an old mare of theirs in hopes that we could help her. My son, Don, was still learning about some of the quirks of equine medicine, so he asked to come along.
When we drove onto the little farm, I was impressed before I even got out of the car. It was clean and neat, the buildings were top notch, and even the paddocks looked groomed. We'd hardly gotten stopped when a lovely young woman stepped out of a barn door and headed our way.
"Dad, it's Jean, the woman I was talking about, the one who came in with the dog." Don whispered, then fell silent.
I could see why he had been impressed. She was certainly easy on the eyes and when she spoke to us, her tone was polite and friendly. She was impressing me even more as she explained about the mare while leading us inside the barn, then to a box stall that held one of the oldest and thinnest mares I've ever seen.
"Two days ago, she looked fine, old, but healthy. Now she won't eat. She won't drink. It's like she's given up." Jean explained quietly, her eyes brimming with tears.
As a rough gauge to tell a horse's age, you often look at its teeth. A horse's teeth keep growing as it ages, but at the same time, it wears its teeth down by chewing. The teeth of an older horse have to be trimmed so that back teeth don't 'float,' but as the teeth are worn and trimmed down, they develop a different shape. One glance in this horse's mouth told me that this horse was extremely old, perhaps more than thirty years. That's ancient for a horse.
Don was taking the old mare's temperature, then listening to her breathing and heart beat with a stethoscope while I'd been checking its mouth and eyes. Then I looked at the overall condition of the horse. The old mare was extremely thin and her breathing was laboured, yet by looking at her coat, you could tell that she was suffering from a recent condition.
I had the feeling that there was something special about this horse though. Then I suddenly had the strange feeling that I recognised the old chestnut mare, but I hadn't seen her for years. I turned slowly to look closely at the young woman.
"If woman wearing a skirt were to try to get on this mare's back, would she still kneel?" I asked.
"Even with her bad knees, she'd probably still try. That is if I'd let anyone near her wearing a skirt." I heard a voice from behind me.
It was Myrna. She still looked good; older, more mature, and somewhat heavier, but I'd gained more weight than she had. She was still a beautiful woman. I turned and stepped toward her, reaching out both arms, hoping for a hug. I wasn't disappointed.
We kept our greeting short though, our main interest at the moment was the old mare. Even though we stood side by side, our eyes were on her daughter and my son as they examined the horse. However as I stood beside Myrna, I found one arm had crept behind her in a gentle hug while one of hers had slipped around my waist, holding me just as gently. It just felt comfortable.
I glanced at Myrna's face and found her gaze meeting mine. Her eyes rolled toward the horse for a second, then lifted to meet my gaze again, silently asking a question. I couldn't bear to give her false hope. I shook my head. I was certain that we were going to have to put the old mare down. I was afraid she had something incurable. Even if we could cure whatever she had, she was just too old to recover from anything that would knock her condition back like this.
Don and Jean took some blood and sputum samples for testing while we watched. Then Don suggested that he take Jean and the samples back to the office. He could test them while Myrna and I caught up on each other's lives. I was still thinking about it when Myrna jabbed me in the ribs.
"Please." She murmured. "We need to talk and I think my daughter needs a break."
"Mother!" Her daughter complained.
"Oh shut up." Myrna smiled at her. "It'll do you good to get away from here for a while. We'll keep an eye on the horse."
I had to smile as I watched my son being led toward his car by a beautiful woman.
"Is she like you used to be?" I asked.
"Nowhere near as patient." Myrna answered softly. "But that's not really surprising, she's had to put up with me for the last twenty-four years and I've certainly grown a lot less patient as time went by."
I wanted to know more, yet I knew that right now wasn't the time to ask unless Myrna opened up first. She was silent as we watched the car drive out of the driveway, then she turned to me and I could see the tears in her eyes. "Tell me the truth, this horse is in pain, isn't she?"
"Yes, she is." I answered, realising that's I'd been right in waiting to ask about anything else.
"And you don't think there's any cure, do you?"
"There isn't. At the most we can keep her alive, but now that she's deteriorated this much, I'm afraid that we'd just be prolonging her pain."
"Well, we can't have that. Do you have enough barbiturates with you to put her out of her misery?"
I nodded silently. We always carried a large vial of Sodium Pentobarbital with us. It wasn't a nice thought, but we'd learned that sometimes there was no prior warning when we'd have to euthanise a large animal. As soon as she saw my nod, Myrna opened the door to the box stall wide and gently rubbed her hand on the old horse's muzzle.
"Come on old girl, let's go for one last walk."
The old horse struggled a bit to get moving, but once she was outside she seemed to know exactly where she wanted to go. Myrna wasn't leading her, that horse had a goal. Myrna dropped back to walk at my side with tears were streaming down her face.
I didn't know what else to do, so I simply draped an arm around her shoulder and hugged her gently. Myrna's arm snaked around my back and she hugged back tightly. She was openly crying now, but her pace never faltered.
The old mare reached a gate, and we had to open it for her, then she carried on. We were going up a slight grade and her pace faltered, but she staggered on wearily, finally stopping on the crest of a knoll near a white stone. Then after a short pause she seemed to try to take one more step, but instead she dropped to her knees, then slowly collapsed.
I dropped my case to the ground and quickly pulled out a stethoscope to listen to her heart beat. It was ragged but still there. One glance at Myrna's face told me that this was where she wanted the old horse to finish its days. I opened my case again, taking out a large syringe, a needle, and the bottle of Sodium Pentobarbital. In only moments, the job was done.
The old horse seemed to relax and for a moment she seemed to breathe easier, then her breath became shorter, shallower, and finally stopped altogether. Listening through the stethoscope, I could hear the heart beat for a few seconds more, then that was gone too. I looked up at Myrna's tear streaked face, nodding once.
She walked over and gently patted the dead mare's flank, then to my surprise she lifted her head and turned to walk away. I packed up my equipment case and followed her down the hill. By the time I caught her, she was waiting at the gate that we'd come through before.
"I'll have her buried tomorrow." She said quietly and to my surprise she was no longer crying.
"Is that legal?" I asked quietly. "I mean, to bury her there?"
"I don't really care." She shrugged. "You saw that white stone?"
"Yes." I had noticed it.
"Well, that's where her brother, that roman nosed gelding of yours is buried. That paddock is where I kept both of them for the last five years and I buried the gelding where he died. Until we brought her into the barn a few days ago, that's where she would stand every night. I think it's only fitting that after all these years their bones lay close to each other, don't you?"
I simply stared at her in surprise. Just thinking about that pair of horses and talking to Myrna brought back a flood of memories that the years between had displaced. After a few seconds, I smiled and nodded as I remembered her words from years before.
"Well, friends should be close. As you said one time, 'that's what friends are for.' Right?"
She looked at me for a moment with a slowly dawning smile and reached out to hook her arm in mine, then led me toward a rambling cottage that sat under several towering firs.
We went inside and she made us a cup of tea. Then we sat on her front porch and talked about our lives since we'd last seen each other.
She explained that her dad had gotten badly injured on the farm and had been unable to continue working, so they had sold out and moved. They'd bought a hobby farm near Calgary in the Alberta foothills where Myrna could keep her horses, but where her dad could be closer to medical help. When her dad had died, her mom had moved into the city. Myrna had used the money from her dad's insurance to expand the size of her hobby farm, then had found that she needed help to handle the work. One of the men that she'd hired really impressed her at that time.
In fact when she'd married him, she was sure she had found her life's mate since he had seemed so interested in horses. It turned out later that he loved horses all right, but only when they were racing, and then only when he had money riding on them in the way of a wager. Because of his extravagant waste of money, betting on the horses, their marriage had been an on again off again affair for about five years, until she had gotten pregnant with Jean.
That's when her husband decided he didn't want to be responsible for a child. One day she came home from a doctor's appointment to find that he had taken all of their furniture worth anything and sold it. At the same time he'd cleaned out their joint bank account.
"Bastard." I growled.
"Oh, it wasn't that bad." She chuckled. "After the first year of living with him, I suspected what was coming. Besides, the property was in my name and all the farm accounts were too. I'd learned the hard way that I couldn't afford to be totally honest with him about finances."
"Oh? I don't understand."
"Well, when I'd lived at home, I'd learned from Dad and from our neighbours. I knew the horses weren't enough to make a go of it, so when I got married, I had to think of another way to make enough to keep them." She smiled and gestured around her at her stables and pastures. "All of this was paid for by growing organic vegies and hiring student labour."
She went on to explain that she'd gotten in on the ground floor of the organic produce market when it was getting started, but found that she couldn't handle all the labour on her own. She'd approached some of the students at a local college and offered them part time work. When the vegetables were ready for sale, she'd started with a roadside stand, but in time she'd found that many of the better restaurants in the nearby city had become her market.
Inside of a few years, one of the restaurant owners had wanted all of the produce of her farm for himself. He had made her an offer to buy the farm, an offer that she couldn't afford to refuse. She'd taken the offer, then she and Jean had flown out to the Island to look around for a new place. Inside of a week, they had bought the property they now lived on. They'd gone back to Alberta, finished off their business there, loaded their horses into stock trucks and their personal possessions into u-haul vans. Then with the help of several friends, they'd made a holiday out of the drive to the coast. They'd been living on the little horse farm for almost six years. Since they'd paid cash for the place, the income from raising and boarding horses was enough to give them a decent wage.
By the time that I'd told her a little about my life since we'd seen each other, Don and Jean had returned. They told us that the tests had shown that the old mare was terminally ill, and Myrna just nodded, then looked at me. I wasn't sure if she was asking for my silence or for me to pass on the bad news. But she only waited a second, then explained that we'd come to that conclusion already and that the old mare was no longer in pain.
I could see the tears start in Jean's eyes and knew that Myrna wasn't in much better shape. From sad experience, I knew there wasn't much either Don or I could do to ease their pain. I felt that they should have a little time to accept the death of the old mare who had been with them for so long. Don must have felt the same way because he reminded me that we were scheduled to do some volunteer work at the local SPCA that evening. We excused ourselves and left quite soon.
From the way Don looked as we left, I guessed that while he had enjoyed his time with Jean, he'd found it hard to tell her that her old friend wasn't going to survive. Actually we hadn't driven far before he thanked me for being there and taking care of the job, explaining that Jean had cried on his shoulder when he'd explained the results of his tests.
I hesitated a moment, then told him some of my history with Myrna, enough that he at least had an idea about the type of woman that had raised Jean. I didn't want to interfere with his life, but if Jean took after her mother, he could make a lot worse choices for a woman to be involved with.
After that night, I never heard anything from him about either Jean or Myrna for about three weeks. Then one Saturday night about ten o'clock as I was watching tv, someone knocked on my door. When I looked out, Myrna was standing there with a bottle of wine in one hand.
"Hi" I smiled as I opened the door.
"Hello, may I come in?" She smiled.
"Well of course." I grinned.
"Well, when you didn't come back to see me, I wasn't sure." She glanced around the room. "I've been sitting at home alone and feeling lonely almost every evening for the last couple of weeks. I thought that since it was your son who was keeping my daughter out every night, the least you could do was have a drink and talk to me for a while."
"Don's been dating Jean?" I stared at her in surprise.
"I think it's a little more than just dating. Do you have some wine glasses?"
"In the kitchen." I managed to say before staring at her again. "More than dating?"
"Yes." She laughed. "Since he brings her home just before morning chores on Saturday and Sunday mornings, I'd say that was more than dating, wouldn't you?"
"Jeez, I wish someone would tell me these things." I sighed as I set out two wine glasses and dug for a corkscrew. "To start with, I think I'm going to shoot my son."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because I've been waiting to see if he developed the nerve to date Jean." I managed to get the cork out of the bottle. "Once he did, I was going to ask you out to dinner or something."
"You didn't want to ask me out because you thought it might make him back off?" She stared at me.
"Right the first time."
"Do you always spoil your kid?"
"No, but he's always been extremely shy with girls." I sighed. "I don't think he's ever dated before and I really liked what little I saw of Jean. I wasn't going to take a chance on screwing up his chances of having what I missed."
"You romantic old fool." She whispered.
I'd finally managed to fill the two wine glasses, but she took them out of my hands, and set them on the table. Then she flowed into my arms.
That night we did something we'd never done before. We made love in a bed. Since we both decided we liked that, we developed a habit of visiting each other once in a while to try it again. I wasn't in a rush to remarry and she didn't seem to be either, so our 'dates' worked out well, at least we thought so.
Don and Jean dated for almost a year before they decided that living apart was silly and they announced that they were going to get married.
While they were on their honeymoon, Myrna needed a bit of a hand around the farm and we actually lived together for two weeks. We discovered that while we were great lovers, we were terrible house mates. Each of us had developed habits while we'd been living alone that managed to annoy the other tremendously. By the time Don and Jean came home, we were hardly talking to one another.
When they drove into the yard at the horse farm, I did my best to set a record for packing the things that I'd had brought with me and leaving to go back to my own little house. That first night, just being in my house and alone again, was wonderful. The second night wasn't quite as nice. I was starting to realize that I really did miss Myrna, particularly at night. The third night I was going to call her, then I chickened out, but I had a very hard time getting to sleep. The fourth day, I phoned her house just before leaving the clinic, but she didn't pick up the phone. I left a message apologizing for being an ass.
However when I got home, her car was in my driveway, and when I walked inside she was in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. We looked at each other and broke into laughter, then hugged each other and both apologised. After we ate together, she spent the night, but left early the next morning.
A couple of nights later, I spent the night at her place. We must have driven any busybody neighbours crazy, but we developed a relationship that suited us and it lasted for several years.
Jean became pregnant the second year they were married, but lost the child in a miscarriage. Then two years later she had a daughter. They called her Myrna Kathleen and as she grew, she reminded me so much of her grandmother that it was uncanny. Myrna was absolutely delighted with that child and doted on her namesake, spoiling her outrageously; I suppose I helped a little too.
Then one evening I was expecting Myrna to come over for a visit, but she didn't show up, so I drove over to see her. I arrived at the farm and couldn't find her at first, then I happened to glance up the hill. She was laying on the ground at the crest of the hill between those two large white stones.
She hadn't let any of us know that she had an incurable heart problem. She'd even sworn her doctor to secrecy so that we wouldn't try to shield her in any way from living her life in her way. In other words, she'd died the way she had lived, loving the world around her, but taking things as they came.
I still visit her at least once a week and try to always remember to bring her flowers. Since the municipality wouldn't let us bury her where she died, I found a cemetery that had a double grave on the crest of a hill and we've order a large white stone for its head. Above her side of the stone, they are going to carve her name, and there will be room on the other side for mine.
Of course across the bottom of the stone, the message will read: