We are faced with choices every day that seem mundane and not worthy of our full attention. We trudge forward, head down, completing the tasks because that is our job. We are flippant and dismissive. Months or years later, those decisions are distant memories and almost impossible to conjure up. Even with prompting they dissolve into our programmable daily routine. The mind is a wonderful escape from reality but when called upon it becomes the beating heart of our consciousness and in it we are washed clean or destroyed from within.

There are those life changing moments when we are shook back to the present. Those moments that sear themselves into the memory banks of our conscious and subconscious and remain sensitive to the touch forever. Those moments when everyone around you hangs on every word, every facial twitch and every nuance of our cadence and verbiage, hoping for a different outcome yet knowing the truth lies exactly where our minds forbade us from going.

Death is an unmitigated force that draws us closer to it every year, every month, every day, every hour and every minute. The all-consuming, ever-present reality that we cannot outrun, out-wit or compromise. And yet, when faced with it, emotions still run the gamut. Sadness, grief, relief, happiness, terror, peace, and everything else between.

My eyes refocus on the present and Im standing on the blacktop with the hot sun on the back of the neck. If I stand here too long I will regret the sunburn tomorrow and yet I remain, eyes transfixed on the scene in front of me. A mare stands in the grass not 10 feet away, calmly munching on the grass, oblivious to the crowd that has gathered to watch. A look left and right confirms what we are witnessing. A woman steps forward and places the needle against the mare’s left jugular vein and administers a sedative. I realize I am holding my breath. A few moments later, she lowers her head and she looks sleepy. The woman steps forward again and injects two syringes full of an orange-pink liquid. Again, I find myself holding my breath. Silence. A calm in the universe. Anticipation and the fear for what comes next. The mare slowly and almost gracefully falls to the ground. Miss Paris is dead. Tears stream from the eyes of the girls to my left and right. They all move forward in unison and individually place white daisies on her neck. They slowly melt in to the background and I realize I am standing there alone with tears in my eyes.

From the desk of Adam Bowden
Diamond Creek President