"Pain that never sleeps falls drop by Drop on Our Hearts Until, Through the Awesome Grace of God, comes Wisdom"--Aeschylus

She was upset. She was wrong. She told me that I must never let the kids see pain in me. She did not want me to talk about Lido. 

 It is a damn sorry role model that teaches kids that lying to the world is fine as long as you lie to yourself with equal vehemence. 

 On December 29, 2008 my little brother who was 17 years old reached into the truck to take his gun out to kill another deer. He was there hunting with his best friend on what is now the New Land. Cerebral Palsy made it so that he only had one arm to use for the removal. The gun accidentally discharged, and I lost my best friend and my role model of perseverance and resilience. 

 And each fall since then I have careened though life as I moved back towards the date of his re-death. I fight though the calendar as if I were running a marathon. I constantly remind myself that January is coming. 

I stumble though the holidays not as a wounded person, but as a wound. Every slight, every new responsibility dropped on me, every insult, no matter how minor rubs the open wound that is my existence for about the last quarter of the year.

 Over the years the pain has become utterly manageable. But the fear has not. I was sitting at my office when the phone rang --the damn phone--the sound that I hate to hear the most --the most disruptive sound in my existence--the phone that still cuts thorough me every time I hear one ring--to be told that Lido was dead.

 And if Lido could die like that every single soul in my life could leave with equal ease. Never could I be safe in feeling that the person that I love today will be with me ten minutes from now. This time of year, I find myself urging those around me to be careful. This creates friction with some teens. They don't like being asked to make sure that they are riding in a safe, responsible manner. Some of them truly resent it. They don't have the life experiences that allow them to understand.

 But that mother was so wrong when she told me that talking about Lido upset the kids and that I should not do so. She was wrong not because she hurt me, but because she sought to deprive me of the chance to teach the children a very important lesson.

 And that lesson is both this simple and this difficult. The lesson is that, like Lido, I did not give up. I fight back every single year and every single year I make it to January. And it is the hardest thing that I ever do. And I do it. 

 And they can do it too--whatever "it" is. After Lido died Chaz Hornbaker's Eagle Scout project was the building a bridge over the swamp behind the Little House that is dedicated to Lido which is inscribed with his constantly encouraging words, 'If I can do it then why can't you?" 

 The message on that bridge speaks louder and clearer than any noise that will ever be made on a telephone.

(This is a picture of Lido on Sand Creek in one of our clinic's that he and I used to do on natural horsemanship in the years before we had our current program)