Another Essay...

A Shift in the Wind
It was the summer of 2003 and I had been working all year to qualify my horse for Nationals, which was held the first week of August in Virginia. By putting aside school, friends and even family Onyx and I were qualified to go to the competition, with only one problem. My uncle was getting married the last week of July in California and my parents insisted that I be there with the rest of the family. I would make it to Nationals, but my horse would spend the entire week prior to competition lounging in his pasture, losing training and muscle tone.
“One of these days you will understand how important family is,” my parents scolded anytime I tried to argue my attendance at the wedding. So I boarded the plane resentfully, not knowing that it would be the last trip we took as a family: my mom, my dad, my sister and myself.
I was an hour away at the time of the accident on Labor Day, September 1, 2003. While other families were celebrating with picnics and barbeques I got a phone call from my dad, telling me Kathryn had been in a wave runner accident. I wasn’t sure what to think – I could tell it was bad by his tone, but he wouldn’t give me any details. All he would say is that my uncle was coming to take me to the hospital.
It wasn’t until we walked into the emergency entrance that I realized my life would never be the same. All normalcies in which my life had revolved around up to that point had just been yanked out from under me, sending me flying unceremoniously into a dark hole. My fourteen year old sister, Kathryn Elise Henson, was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Joseph’s Mercy Center in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She was caught in a thunderstorm while trying to make it back to the dock on her wave runner. As the rain cleared my parents looked out and saw the wreckage a couple hundred yards away against some large rocks on the shoreline – Kathryn’s wave runner had gone airborne and flipped on top of her; despite all the rescuers’ repeated attempts to revive her, my sister died on Lake Ouachita.
For the next couple of days sobbing, tears, and hushed whispers filled the house as friends and family filtered in and out; bringing food and supplies in exchange for updates and the latest gossip. My parents became hollow human shells as they made the arrangements. Mothers should never have to pick out burial clothes for her daughter; fathers aren’t supposed to sign for caskets and floral arrangements for their little girls.
When visitors came to the house, visitation and funeral it became hard to tell who was comforting who. I found my only comfort in my horse. He was the only one who never gave me the dreaded looks of sympathy or those rib crushing hugs; he was just there for me, letting me cry in his black mane and mentally escape from everything going on in the physical world.
The months that followed were hollow and stale. My parents did the best they could to remember they still had a living daughter, my teachers at school cut me more slack than necessary and the students tried not to stare when I walked by. I filled my days with horses, doing everything I could to try and be a normal high school senior, but always fell short.
Graduation day sucked. There was a scholarship given to one of my classmates in my sister’s name that my dad presented. All I could think about was the fact that my sister wasn’t there and that we sat under a huge steel beam that had the words “In Loving Memory of Kathryn Elise Henson” painted onto it along with the entire student body’s signatures. As all my classmates left to go to various graduation parties and my family waited for me at my house, I drove to the cemetery and hung my tassel on my sister’s grave. It killed me that she would never get the chance to walk across the stage and receive her own diploma. She would never get to have a boyfriend or go to prom and laugh with her friends; she had such a great laugh.
I look back now at my life and see that it is separated into two sections: “Before” and “After”. Before Kathryn died I was carefree, immortal and driven. I figured that I would qualify for the 2008 Olympic and then go on to compete in the 2010 World Equestrian Games and that my family would be there for me after I’d conquered the equestrian world. I didn’t take into account that sometimes you have to put your family first; because I never had to prior to that stormy Monday.
After Kathryn died I learned the hard way to cherish every minute I had with my family and friends, because a life can be taken with just a shift of the wind. I had to put my east coast competition goals and college career aside because I didn’t want to be sixteen hours away from my family so soon after Kathryn’s death. Whenever my family needs me, whether it is good or bad, I am there; even if it means putting my own riding career on the back burner for a couple of days. I learned with a single heartbreaking experience that being with my family for a week is more important than doing well at a single horse show. There are horse shows every weekend, but I only have one family.