I keep dawdling around, distracting myself with busywork when I ought to be organizing my thoughts… I had everything planned out for my next blog entry right down to the title: “Endurovet Rides Again”!!!** I’ll just pull my initial effort straight from the transcription I wrote for my cousin:

Karen was my mentor when Michael & I latched on to endurance riding as “our sport” after picking up a flyer at the feed store in 1990. “Way back when” she was a schoolteacher in Grapevine: I was witness as K worked out her relationship with Mark. He was 10 years older than Karen & had gotten out of a messy 1st marriage himself, fortunately without any children involved…
(This summarizing is quite helpful - what just occurred to me is another disparity in our relationship; while I considered Karen to be one of my closest friends, she didn’t ask me to be a bridesmaid? Hmmm, maybe it was just that pesky religious difference - her family is very evangelical/verging on fundamentalist?)
Anyway, I got the impression early on that Mark was trying to isolate Karen from her family - going to NB, then returning to TX to settle near Amarillo, “just far enough” to make visiting difficult!
But over the years, I got the distinct impression that I was doing the heavy lifting in our relationship - by the time Zach was a teenager, I had withdrawn quite a bit, but I still considered her a close friend - I just didn’t reach out as often. Guess that’s why it felt like such a betrayal when I was unburdening my soul during that final disastrous custody battle - as it turned out, she was sharing this with Mark, who was then passing intel along to Michael!
When this truth came to light, she justified their actions by framing as some sort of intervention, since I was “too permissive” with Zach - needless to say,  our relationship has never recovered. We are now passing acquaintances at the rare rides K attends, which are few & far between (after she married Mark, it was obvious he was trying to isolate her from that too!)
It will be curious to see if she now starts going to more rides as a widow?

** I had planned to shepherd Tony through his first 25-mi event in 7 yrs, & mine in 3 - however Texas weather had other plans! Torrential rains flooded the trails & the Forest Service feared too much potential damage, so our ride was canceled. Endurovet will have to delay “feeling like a genuine endurance rider” until 5/11…

https://www.robertsonfuneral.com/obituaries/mark-schrader/#!/TributeWall