We're all mortal.

"She chose to get up early and work. To see the sun rise from the comfort of her worn saddle," Muffy Mead-Ferro described the morning her mom died in her book Confessions of a Slacker Mom. It was her mother's 61st birthday and "by midmorning, her horse shied frantically and reared over backwards so fast that she she didn't have time to throw herself out of the way."

"Granddad, heartbroken over having just lost his only daughter, had a comment I wouldn't have predicted," she continued. ""Well," he said after leaving the hospital, "we're all mortal.""

After the memorial service, she thought about what Granddad said and realized it provided comfort to her. "Death is a condition that's shared equally... by all of us," she explained. "Even his beloved daughter was subject to it.... My mom's death... was just a miserable manifestation of the fact that the world is not safe or predictable."

The day after the service the family went out on horseback to move the yearlings out to their summer range. Muffy rode in her mother's saddle and felt sure they were exactly where her mother wanted them to be...

"Right here in this wonderful, unsafe world. On horseback."

Granddad was right. We're all mortal. So grab the reins my dear friends...