Mourning Holiday

When my friends heard I was going on a cattle drive in Montana, they all had the same reaction. “All by yourself?” they asked. “Will there be other women?” I told them I didn’t care. I was going for my sanity. It was March when I signed up, a scant four months since the unexpected death of my husband, Dean. There was no warning he was suffering from the same heart condition that put Clinton in the hospital for a triple bypass. My husband died on his way home from work at Geiger, where he was a corrections officer. He was only 57.

Dean was my love, my friend, my devoted handyman, mechanic and financial whiz. He was a man who never knew a stranger, the one who introduced me to all our neighbors in rural Foothills. He was the father of our two sons.

And now he was dead and I was very frightened – could I manage an independent life without him?

Even after several months had gone by, I couldn’t quite grasp the reality that 24 years of marriage were over so abruptly. They say you’re numb at first and they are right. With my children grown and the house too empty, I needed to get away and reflect on my loss. I also needed a jumpstart to discover this unfamiliar life of “me” not “we.”

An article in the Spokesman described a twice-yearly cattle drive ala “City Slickers.” I’d had a horse as a teenager, and it sounded like fun – not a vacation but a six-day adventure that would stretch and challenge me. My own version of “Fear Factor” combined with “Survivor.” Could I eat chuck wagon grub, sleep in a tent and ride a horse for eight hours a day? There would be no running water, no curling iron and no lighted makeup mirror. And harder still was the prospect of meeting new people on my own.

A couple of days before the September