Ever since she was 4 years old, Claiborne Miller-Davis always found a sense of joy and purpose on the back of a horse.
Six decades later, on her deathbed, her final wish was to see her horses one last time.
“Those are her kids,” said her husband, Michael Davis, looking over at the couple’s daughter, Elizabeth, and Miller-Davis’ two horses, Princess and Stormy.
“That was her last wish,” he said.
The horses made a special trip from Troy, about 20 miles east of Charlottesville in Fluvanna County, to Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital on the afternoon of April 10 to bring their beloved owner and rider some of the joy and purpose they gave her in life also in death.
Miller-Davis died the following day. She was 64.
About a year and a half ago, Miller-Davis was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Doctors gave her only 30 days to live. But Miller-Davis, not only a lifelong equestrian but a nurse of more than 30 years — the last seven at University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville — took her doctors by surprise. She didn’t live another month; she lived another 18.
In the midst of cancer treatment, Miller-Davis even won a Virginia Nurses Association Leadership Excellence Award last year.
Just a week before her death, she was walking the stables and grooming her horses, a friend shared with The Daily Progress. Soon after, her health took a rapid downturn unexpectedly and she was admitted to the hospital.
“We were trying to figure out a way to get Claiborne to the horses for a final goodbye,” her husband said. “And then we couldn’t, that wasn’t practical. So all the different horse clubs that she was part of … they all came together when they knew."
“They all said, ‘We got to do something,’” Davis continued. “They made arrangements to get the horses here.”
Two of those riding friends who stepped up were Kiki Osbourne of Dappir Ridge Eventing, where Miller-Davis boarded her horses for the past decade, and Katie Goodrich, a physician assistant at Martha Jefferson who first met and began to ride with Miller-Davis through Dappir Ridge.
Around 2:30 p.m. April 10, Osbourne drove a horse trailer carrying Princess and Stormy into a small parking lot outside of the patient transport wing of Martha Jefferson, where Miller-Davis had been receiving treatment.
The overcast sky may have matched the emotions of the dozen or so close friends and family who tearfully gathered under a canopy outside of the hospital as it unleashed a steady downpour of rain.
But, there was the light of a smile on her daughter’s face while, one at a time, she carefully led the horses to her mother’s side.
Elizabeth Davis grew up on the back of a horse as well, riding right alongside her mother, said her father.
Still in her scrubs from the operating room, Goodrich knelt by Miller-Davis’ side as she guided her friend’s hand onto Stormy’s side.
The family has owned Stormy for close to 10 years, according to Osbourne, who said that Miller-Davis’ “heart horse” suddenly died from a colic episode in 2023. It wasn’t long after that Miller-Davis received the cancer diagnosis, so she told Osbourne, “I’ve got to have a horse.”
“It’s what’s been keeping her going,” said Osbourne, holding on to the reins of Princess, the horse Miller-Davis recently acquired.
Bringing horses on hospital property is not an ordinary occurrence by any means. But, both the family and Martha Jefferson medical staff who cared for Miller-Davis were determined to make it happen.
“Martha Jefferson really signed off on it, as well as a lot of the nurses wanted to see it happen, as well as the horse clubs,” said Michael Davis. “I mean, there’s a group effort to get this together. … They’ve just been awesome.”
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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