Shadows

When people die, they leave shadows of themselves… and everything about the place they inhabited is never quite the same. There's an eerie quietness there- the chair at his home office where he used to sit. The model car collection he cherished. The plans for a new project spread across his desk. It's almost as if he left them and was going to come right back to it like he always did. But this time, of course, he didn't.

I had been to this house so many times as a child- and I remembered every bit of it feeling so grand and big. Now, it felt small, empty, and filled with shadows of him. Now it felt so much smaller. And empty. And it's filled with shadows of his essence. Uncle Stan’s two great loves were horses and cars, and in every corner of the house there was a horse figurine or a model car. In the back garage sat four luxury cars and two vintage ones. They hadn’t been driven in ages. Along the side of the garage were the stables. He’d had horses throughout his life, so it was strange to see the stables so dark and empty. I sat down at his desk, in his chair, drinking in what used to be.

There was a small tattered black notebook sitting on the edge of the desk. Picking it up, I carefully turned the crumpled pages as if touching him. His handwriting painted the pages with his thoughts, goals, and things to do. Sometimes they were organized into specific to-do lists and other times it was just paragraphs expressing an idea. Sometimes it was a sketch of a horse.

I turned to the last page Uncle Stan had written on. It said: “I feel like I still have so much to do…I have to”. He had never finished the sentence. I felt my stomach tighten as tears invaded my eyes, burning. I was so tired of crying. I threw the book across the room as fiercely as I could. It landed with a small crash.

“Child, why did you do that?” I heard a voice say. I turned to see my Aunt Julie emerge from the darkness. She approached me slowly, heaviness in every step.

“I’m sorry…did I wake you?”

“Nothin’ woke me up- I hardly sleep these days.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “Me neither…”

“Girl you too young to be stayin’ up all night in here.”

“I guess.”

Silence.

“So why you throwin’ my husband’s stuff all over the place?” She demanded, with a half-smile on her face.

“It was only that book…”

“And so?”

“He never got the chance to finish what he was trying to write…”

Silence.

“There were many things he never got to finish darlin’,” She said softly, “But there were so many things he did do…”

I couldn’t look directly at her, I turned my gaze to the white stallion painting proudly displayed on the wall in the middle of the room. The horse was grazing in a field with the sky kissed by dusk. Aunt Julie followed my gaze.

“He loved his horses so much,” She said wistfully with a twinge of sadness. I slowly nodded in agreement. Oh, how he used to love horses.

“I was going to wait to give this to you, but I thought I’d give it to you now.”

I turned to look at my aunt, eyebrows creased with curiosity as she handed me the rectangular piece of paper. It was a check. For 20,000 dollars. I blinked -unsure if it was even real at first. But there was my name, in his handwriting. It had been dated a month before he died.

“What…what is this for?” I asked, a bit stunned.

“I don’t really know, child. One day he just wrote it up for you- thought he’d give it to you himself. But once he knew he was going, he wanted me to pass it on to you.”

“I mean…I can’t…I can’t take this,” I said, handing it back towards her.

She shook her head.

“He knew you had dreams and all…that’s why he wrote it up for you. I’m sure they’ll be more for you when I’m gone…but he wanted you to have that now.”

She placed her hand on my shoulder and looked at me with her big black eyes and whispered,

“Take it. It’s a gift.”

Then she rose ever so slowly and disappeared into the darkness of the house.

***************

When my cousin Matthew told me that they had bought him a horse, I knew I had to see it.

“Yeah he told us that he felt like he was gonna be able to start riding again, so we bought him a white stallion- name is Pretty Boy,” Matthew told me, “And we were just waitin’ to give it to him…” As he told me my mind wandered to the painting of the white horse in the office…it felt surreal. Almost cruel. I never got the chance to say goodbye, so maybe I could find some sense of him seeing the horse.

We got out of the truck and headed towards the barn.

I stopped, catching my breath. There he was, Pretty Boy. But I could tell he wasn’t healthy. He seemed gaunt and scraggly as if he hadn’t had enough to eat in weeks with his ribs protruding through his skin. His white coat lacked the luster and shine I’d seen my Uncle’s horses with, and his mane was dingy and thin. I felt nausea emerge as I realized the lack of care for him. My Uncle would have been furious. And yet even in the state he was in, I could feel his beauty, and it overwhelmed me. My uncle would have brought that beauty outward.

I walked up to him slowly, his pale blue eyes locking with mine. I could tell he was a gentle, sweet soul, just like him. As I stood right in front of him, he stretched his nose to my chest, as if trying to embrace me. It was an unexpected gesture of friendship and I felt my heart melt. I wrapped my arms around him and wept. And he just laid his head on my shoulder sighing heavily, understanding my tears.

Time seemed to stop- it was just me and that horse…and my uncle. As the tears subsided, I took another good look at him, and I knew what I had to do.

“Matthew,” I said, wiping my face, “I’m buying him.” Matthew looked at me like I was crazy.

“Uh say what now?”

“You heard me- I’m buying him.”

“I mean…I was gonna keep him…And where you got that kind of money?”

I laughed, recalling the events of the previous night. Life has a funny way of connecting the dots, even when they seem hidden in the shadows.

“That’s my business. But I’m taking that horse,” I said firmly, my eyes narrowed.

He knew I meant business, and I did.

I turned and looked at Pretty Boy and smiled. And I felt something I hadn’t in a long time: hope.