The dream that was a gift ❤️

Happy Saturday friends!

My friend Katie in Colorado still boards at my old ranch and took this sunset pic from there—man I love that view. Spectacular. I'm slowly feeling down into my body and into this land here in North Carolina. The beauty here is...softer, older. Mom would say it was older. She liked to tell me about how the sharp peaks of the Rockies were new compared to the soft, rounded mounds of the mountains of North Carolina. A big piece of my heart will always be in the big sky and wild feel of Colorado. But I do feel like I'm settling in here after two years :-) The land is speaking to me now. ❤️

I did have some big sky moments this week:

And while maybe not so much big sky in this one but such a blue sky:

I just love it when the sunset lights up the big pines:

•••

What a big Mom dream week. I dreamed that my brother Michael and I were with Mom. We had spent some hours together and were parting ways and we stopped and went back to take pictures of us together. Then we asked to sit down and talk about what she wanted as she was dying. While she looked beautiful and well, we knew she had cancer.

I wish we had done this in real life.

I wish I had thought to put a thick layer of memory foam on her hospital bed so she would have been more comfortable.

I wish I had known to give her Xanax way earlier—that the anxiety was physically hurting her. I wonder how much of her pain was anxiety? I kick myself for not knowing that.

I wish I had known that when she started taking liquid morphine, that we would never be able to hear her voice again.

I wish, I wish, I wish...I wish her death had been easier on her.

But! I also had an amazing dream! She and I were lazing around on her bed and talking. Not verbally like humans but communicating like spirits (or animals)—information was just flowing between us:

She let me know that what we saw during her last days was not what she was experiencing. She showed someone's hands placing beautiful, ripe, brightly colored fruit all around her body. Then they placed pieces that were shaped like fruit but were covered in jewels. She told me they wrapped her loosely in linen and she felt safe.

She felt safe.

My God. That dream was such a GIFT.

I told my aunt about that and she said, "Well, she did love jewelry!" Ha! So true! And as we were thinking about it, we remembered how she would exclaim over eating these pears and honestly, who wouldn't? I think I'll go order myself some right now, even though they don't ship until October!

Other Mom things:

B-Rad sent me this pic from the grocery store this week. Something Mom would say to us often:

And this made me laugh out loud! My brother and I always used to fool around about this, how she loved each of us the most. I was scrolling through pics in my phone from years ago and ran across this and remembered that I had texted it to Mom 😂😂😂

•••

THE RANCH

The Polar Bear giving up her bed of shavings for mother and daughter Alaska and Dancer:

Rayn looking all pink and gold in the late afternoon sun:

Rayn again :-) B-Rad and I have been noticing that she's stuck like glue to Wynter and we're thinking that her eyesight has deteriorated even more. He's being less pushy with her too, maybe recognizing that she needs him in a new way:

It's that time of year where the butterflies swarm over the Lantana. This is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail:

And while I don't see any red spots, my Seek app says this is a Red-spotted Admiral:

OMG, zoom in and look at Sweetness's nose when he drinks:

People often ask me, "How do horses drink?" They suck up the water like we would from a straw! I can't tell you how many times Wynter comes over to me after having a drink—a gleam in his eye. Haha buddy, fool me once! Now I know, he's holding water in his mouth and he really wants to give me a nice hug and drop all that water down the back of my shirt!

This week has been amazing and completely out of the norm, mid 80s all week, lower humidity, lots of cloudy days and on Friday morning, rain:

Just because he's the cutest:

The never ending mowing continues. This looks like beautiful green grass but it's actually a weed called Creeping Charley. The only way to get rid of it is to cover it up with a tarp and kill it or use Roundup. No way we're using poison. Maybe someday we'll cover it and reseed with grass. The animals won't eat it. It chokes out everything else over time. Kind of impressive really. It makes for a nice "lawn" lol:

The Polar Bear and our sweet friend Bonnie:

This manure mushroom really is this blue grey color:

But the next day they all looked like this:

Found funny ManChild and Polar Bear being silly. She just stayed like that for a minute 😂

Speaking of ManChild and dogs, I found this memory from 2007—when he was a baby-cheeked 10 year old and I Love Lucy was 7 months old:

And one more memory from 2012. Conrad was the gateway drug into my life now:

THE MEMES:

I couldn't stop laughing:

"Matt, I want a divorce." Haaaaaa!

Oh! I wrote a midweek blog post, you can read it here!