I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. And I realize I should write now about Haiti or Afghanistan or Iraq or the Democratic Republic of Congo—or any of the other hundreds of places in the world where death lurks in every corner. But what’s actually been preoccupying me lately is the death of horses. And I want to say right here that I believe the death of a human being—whether hundreds of thousands or one—is more tragic than the death of an animal. But I also believe that whenever a soul leaves a body—whether that body is two-legged or four-legged, or crawls or runs or slithers or flies—there is a mourning. It means a subtraction from the sum total of life in the world, and I grieve for the loss. I feel this way even when I kill bugs.

So the reason I’m so preoccupied with horse death lately is my friend Stephanie in Charlottesville called a few weeks ago and told me, through a voice choked with anguished tears, that the vet would be coming in a few days to put down Dee Dee.

Dee Dee was my first horse. I don’t want to bore you with the details of how Dee Dee came to be my first horse and then came to be my friend Stephanie’s horse, so let give you an abbreviated version: Shortly after we moved to northern Virginia from New Mexico, it was clear that Dee Dee, who by this time was 24 years old, was ready to retire. As luck would have it, one of my best friends from high school, Stephanie, lived just three hours south of us on five beautiful acres, and was looking for a horse to do some light trail riding and be a safe first horse for her two sons. I offered her Dee Dee. She took her.

When Stephanie called to tell me Dee Dee was going to be put down, I wasn’t surprised. She had just turned 29 years old, which puts her, in human years, solidly in her mid- to late-80s. Few horses live that long. I last saw Dee Dee in November, when we went to visit Stephanie and her family for the weekend. Dee Dee still looked remarkable for her age, but it was clear she was declining. She had lost weight and was losing her eyesight. When she would walk, I could tell her hind legs were stiff and likely hurting. Stephanie and I talked about it and I told her if she was still my horse, I would have her euthanized now, while she was still relatively healthy and happy. The alternative was to risk a catastrophic event—colic or a fall on the ice and broken pelvis—that would force the issue and put her through unnecessary trauma and pain. The fact was, she couldn’t live much longer. It was better to give her a peaceful, pain-free death.

Stephanie agreed in theory, but as the person who had to make that very real decision, it was torture. She had a horse who, by all measures, seemed okay. How could she make the decision to end her life?

***

Dee Dee was, quite simply, an exceptional horse. I’ve ridden probably fifty horses in my lifetime, and I’ve never known one who was as kind, trusting, and willing as Dee Dee. She took me over my first fence. She carried me over miles of trails. She would be the guest horse for anyone who came to visit. She would give pony rides to my nieces and nephews. She taught Dave how to ride. She was the first horse both of my kids ever rode.

And yet none of that really describes why she was exceptional. This is just what she did, not who she was. The essence of her was much greater than that…

Our property in New Mexico was bordered by a narrow, fairly deep irrigation ditch. The only way to get off the property was to either drive across the cattle guard that lay across it, or walk across a small, very old, very rickety footbridge that was about eight feet long and only three feet wide. Within a few days of Dee Dee’s arrival in New Mexico (from California, her home state), we decided to take her across the footbridge. This was a really bad idea. The bridge was barely strong enough (or wide enough) for a full-grown human to cross safely, much less a half-ton horse. But I was stupid and didn’t realize this, so I led her across it. She hesitated, but trusted me and followed. The bridge held.

The way back, however, was different. Once again I crossed first and once again she hesitated. Once again I encouraged her to follow me, and once again she did. But this time, the second her hind legs were on the bridge, Dave and I heard a crack. The wood buckled and broke to pieces under her feet. She fell into the ditch. She managed to pull her front legs onto the other side of the bank, but her hind legs were caught. For a frantic minute, she struggled to pull herself out. She snorted and dug her front hooves into the dirt, but kept losing her footing. The whites ringed her eyes. I dug my own heels into the ground and leaned back on the lead rope that was attached to her halter, hoping if I could bring her head far enough forward, she’d have enough weight in front to pull herself out. I pulled; she continued to scramble for purchase. Finally, she lunged forward and dragged herself out of the ditch. I was relieved, but as she walked away, she hopped on three legs, refusing to put any weight on her left hind. I looked under her to see a deep cut on the inside of her thigh and blood running down her leg.

We called the vet, who drove out to the farm to look at it and assured us the cut wasn’t bad. She would need a few weeks off for it to heal, but no muscles were torn. She wouldn’t need stitches. Still, it was clear she was in pain and I felt terrible that I was responsible for it. After the vet left, I stood with Dee Dee for a good while, my face pressed into her neck, whispering my apologies. Every instinct in Dee Dee told her not to cross that bridge—but she ignored them and crossed because I asked her to.

A few weeks later, after she was healed, and after we had built a strong, solid, wide bridge with rails that the horses could cross, I led Dee Dee up the driveway to it. As we approached, she stopped and stretched out her long neck and snorted at it. I stepped onto the bridge and told her, “Come on, girl. It’s okay. I promise.” She took one hesitant step, and then another, until all four feet were on the bridge. She stood there for a moment, and then tentatively walked across it.

This was the essence of Dee Dee: her willingness to trust the people around her again and again, even after they’d betrayed her. But she did it with a certain dignity. She didn’t follow blindly. Rather, she had the air of a monarch who bends to the will of her subjects because she knows her duty is to serve.

***

Stephanie called me the afternoon Dee Dee was put down. “She’s gone,” she told me quietly. It was clear she had been crying, but it wasn’t the anguished sobs of her earlier phone call. It was a cry of grief, unadorned and unburdened.

She told me how, a few hours earlier, when the vet came and inserted the first syringe to sedate Dee Dee and the second syringe to send her into an irreversible anesthetized sleep, Dee Dee quietly bent her legs and laid down with the dignity that had accompanied her the span of her long life. She told me how peaceful it was and how she could feel her spirit leave her. She told me how it was not so much a death as a moving on, a transition from one place to the next.

I’ve written a lot here about my agnosticism and reluctance to believe in things I can’t see, including heaven. Yet for some reason, whenever an animal I’ve loved has died, I have no problem imagining it in paradise. I can easily imagine Dee Dee in a field with endless green grass and clover, in a herd where she is most definitely the boss, perhaps with a foal at her side. There are no flies in this place and no predators. Mostly, she spends her time grazing and galloping with the herd and taking long naps in the sun. Occasionally she jumps a log on the ground because she remembers how much fun that used to be. And she eats the apples and carrots the kids bring to her, and she’ll even take them for a ride every now and then.

But even as I write that, I doubt it’s true. It’s not that Dee Dee’s spirit doesn’t live on. It does. But it’s not in a place. Where Dee Dee lives is in the lives of all the people who rode her throughout the years. All the people, like myself, she ferried over their first fence—giving we earthbound mortals the sense that, for a moment, we were flying. All those she took exploring over unknown hills and across vast deserts. All those who rode her in horse shows and won ribbons that they hung on her bridle and could see in her a pride that told them on some level, she knew she had won. Where Dee Dee lives is in all those who asked her to trust them, and felt her whisper a quiet “yes” in reply.