Drem, and her dreamer
/Last night I watched a current of wispy pinkish clouds float across a lapis lazuli sky and wondered if that’s what it would look like to see the train of the Lord’s robe fill the temple. It was one of those precious, fleeting moments when the veil between heaven and earth feels nearly transparent—I could see the flame of the Holy Spirit flickering over neighbors’ houses, while the happy wild daisies bobbed together along the roadside to remind me of the Great Cloud of Witnesses that cheer me on from the next realm.
It was a gift that I didn’t know I would need to carry me into this hard day.
My horse, Drem, passed away overnight, at home on my parents’ farm. My mom called to tell me this morning. Dad buried her on the hill that rises beyond the creekbed that runs beside her corral, in view of Mt. Adams.
I call her mine, but she was really shared between me and my sister, Hannah. I think of her as my lifelong confidant and friend, but she didn’t enter my life until I was 12 and I only saw her sporadically after I got married at 20. Mom, Dad, Hannah, and Amy all spent more time with her in the last ten years than I did. Even so, the bond between a horse and her girl is real, and without her sweet spirit on this side of it anymore, the veil between heaven and earth seems a lot thicker today.
It’s a literary cliche at this point, but with good reason: A love for horses has been tattooed on my inner being since before I had the words to express it. I distinctly remember the ache in my chest every time I saw someone else riding a horse, every time I watched Black Beauty, every time we passed horses grazing in a field on the way to church on Sunday mornings—starting at three or four years old, if I had to guess. I remember the hours Hannah and I would spend poring over horse books, magazines, and Breyer model horse catalogs. We eventually outlet our obsession by writing and illustrating our own horse stories (shout out to my beloved fictional racehorse, Robin Hood).
Drem was my dream come true. She came to us as a seven-year-old greenbroke quarter horse mare named “Lady,” and we renamed her “Dreamer” because she had the same coloring as Soñador from the movie, Dreamer. But the name evolved over the years to fit the horse she really was: quick, endearing, a little bit unexpected, and highly independent.
The hardest part of anticipating this parting, besides surviving the crashing waves of grief, has been wondering who I will be without her. In so many ways, she formed me: I learned how to lend her my calm when she was nervous instead of adding my own anxiety into the mix; I learned to lead with confidence even when my follower is ten times my size; I learned what it feels like to be free and independent on those long, solitary rides in the fields or around the Winterstein loop.
To her, I was strong and trustworthy, a safe place—even when I felt scared, small, and weak. Sometimes all it takes to become something is for someone to believe that’s what you already are.
I had no idea back then that the horse I was trying to train was actually training me in all the skills I now use daily to be a wife, a mom, a disciple.
It’s hard to release her, the link between Hallie the child and Hallie the adult, especially knowing that she might be the only horse I’ll ever have that is really “mine.” But the tattoo on my inner being is still there. I’m still the same dreamer, meeting God beneath cloud-trails and on horseback, in the shadow of mountains and the sunshine of daisies.
And I know who I’ll be riding in the ranks of the armies of heaven. ☺
