Two weeks ago, my older daughter’s riding instructor, Leslie, went to the hospital with heart problems. On Saturday morning we learned that things didn’t look good. A few hours later, just when the blizzard was winding down, my daughter got the phone call that Leslie had died.

The grief was tidal, a flood of tears and then, when they subsided, a flurry of phone calls and the scrambling to pitch in and help. There was a farm to take care of, after all, and a couple feet of snow to complicate things.

Leslie’s sudden death triggered a rapid chain of events, jarring in their finality. Almost immediately, the farm started shutting down. Horses have been sold and relocated, Leslie’s dog went to a new home, tack is being sold. Soon Buttons, an old horse that Leslie couldn’t bear to part with, will be put to sleep and my daughter will be there for the procedure. Throughout everything, my daughter has stayed involved, mucking stalls, finding homes for the animals, snacking on the leftovers from the funeral meal, sorting and cleaning, and connecting with the other workers. There is healing in the closure.
 

The day after the memorial service, one of Leslie’s sisters invited my daughter and her friend, up from South Carolina for the funeral, to the farm to pick out some things to remember Leslie by. My daughter came home with a framed picture of a horse (of course), one of Leslie’s t-shirts, and a pair of her old riding boots. The boots are tight but she wears them anyway.

All too abruptly, my daughter lost a job, instructor, and dedicated cheerleader. She’s handling Leslie’s death well—so well, in fact, that I sometimes wonder if I’m feeling the loss more intensely than she is. From my vantage point, I see the big picture, can weigh just how much has been dashed. Through their shared love for horses, Leslie met a need in my daughter that my husband and I never will. Leslie respected and nurtured my daughter’s interests in ways I can’t, simply because I don’t understand that part of my daughter’s world. At the farm, with Leslie, there was such potential. And now it’s over. This is what hurts me most.

For months, my daughter’s Mondays and Thursdays have been spent at the farm. Tomorrow is her last official day of work; all the horses should be gone by the weekend. New good things will come—already are, in fact—but for now, whenever I drive by the farm I get a twinge of sad. Leslie and her farm were such a gift to my daughter. All of us feel the hole.

This same time, years previous: a Wednesday list, itchy in my skin, in which we enroll our children in school, travel tips, the perfect classic cheesecake, ice cream cake, and lemon tart.

When my younger brother was in high school, he did a sculpture of my older son (then just a toddler) for his art class. Eventually, he passed it on to us. Normally the bald-headed baby sits buried in a closet, but every now and then it rears its head (ha), appearing unexpectedly on someone’s pillow or as a prop for some imagined play. Lately, it’s taken up residence on my older son’s dresser.

Last week, my younger kids set the bust on a stool, plopped a wig, sunglasses, and headphones on his bald head, and turned him into a punk-rock chorister, Christmas caroler, or something.

Then they moved on to some other game and left the bust standing in the middle of the floor. When my older son walked into his room a few hours later, his marbled mini-me gave him quite a start.

That evening while my older son was at his EMT class and the rest of us were downstairs, my older daughter went upstairs to get a shower. A couple seconds later, we heard an ear-splitting scream, followed by running footsteps and loud gasping breaths.

Ha, I thought. She must have found the bust.

But then I realized the gasps weren’t laughter, but racking sobs. What in the world? Had my son crossed the line and created some grisly scene? I tore upstairs, pissed off in advance. At the top, my daughter was wailing, hands over her face, shoulders heaving.

“The shower,” she sobbed. “Behind the curtain.”

I gave her a quick hug before stomping down the hall to investigate. Senses tingling, I pulled aside the shower curtain.

Oh  good grief. No wonder! Not one bit grisly, sure, but deeply disturbing nonetheless. The statue was terrifying in its innocence. How perfectly, delightfully creepy.

Back to my daughter I went. I wrapped my arms around her, buried my face in her hair, and exploded with laughter.

“I’m sorry I’m laughing.” I could barely choke out the words. “But, oh, honey, he got you good.”

My daughter cried for another couple minutes, but then her shoulders started to tremble—her sobs were turning to giggles.

“I thought it was an alien and it was going to kill me!”

The bust has now been relocated to our bedroom floor and the children have been strictly forbidden from playing with it. My son’s creativity may have been highly entertaining once, but I think that was enough trauma-humor to last us a good while.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (2.2.15), wheat berry salad, and moldy beans.

This same time, years previous: sour cream and berry baked oatmeal, stuck buttons and frozen pipes, lemon creams, how we got our house, taco seasoning mix, homemade mayonnaise, rock-my-world cocoa brownies, orange-cranberry biscotti, and curried lentils.