How life can change in an instant

Two beautiful Clydesdales and a pretty half-Clyde. I'm no horse expert, but as I understand it, work horses are more mellow than "regular" horses. These three all have lovely personalities and I love being around them!


I'm not in my happy place at the moment. On Sunday, one of my closest friends, someone I can always rely on and who has brightened my life immeasurably, was thrown from her horse while out riding on her farm. She's now in the orthopaedic trauma unit at an Ottawa hospital with a broken pelvis and a concussion. We're just glad she was wearing a helmet or she might not be here, period. Her husband found her confusedly wandering the field (on a broken pelvis!) after the horse returned to the barn without her. It's going to be a long recovery for my friend, but fortunately she has "just" one break, not several. She is a fit, active, energetic person but she's also technically old enough to be my mother (if she had been a teen bride!), and it seems the older we get, the more time it takes to heal.

I'm still not over the shock of all this, and it strikes me yet again how fragile life can be, and how everything can be turned upside-down in an instant. I am immeasurably sad for my friend, who now has this long, painful recovery ahead of her. She dearly loves riding, but has already talked of giving it up, and I wouldn't blame her. Who would want to take the chance of going through this again?

My friend is not one to enjoy sitting around doing nothing, and I know that spending any extended period in hospital will test her patience. She will have to go to a rehab hospital after she is stabilized. Thinking of her being held back by this devastating injury makes me well up.

I am also sad for me, because I will miss my friend's happy presence at yoga class, and at the community choir practices we attend together, even if it's just for eight weeks or so (that's the amount of time she will be made to stay relatively immobile.) I want everything to go back to the way it was before Sunday afternoon, when something unknown spooked my friend's normally-placid horse, and everything, literally and figuratively, came crashing down.

My friend and her husband are very active in the community and spend a lot of time helping others, including making deliveries for Meals on Wheels. One hopes that all that kindness and generosity will be reciprocated, now that they are facing a struggle of their own. We live in a rather tightly-knit rural community where neighbours look out for each other, so that helps a lot.

And on that note, if you have any suggestions for nice things I can do for my friend and hubby, especially while she is in hospital, let me know! I'm trying to think of more imaginative stuff than taking flowers and chocolate (not that we aren't doing that, too!) Gordon took a pot o' chili over to my friend's hubby last night, which is a start.

Be careful out there... in many ways, humans are very strong but in others, we break easily. Life can change so much at any given moment. It's important to enjoy today.