This was a great feature in skyrim and its hard to play without it.

http://download.fliggerty.com/download-110-36

great thanks

edit... yikes not really the desired effect.. you still shoot the arrow.

The "hard way" to save the arrow is to open your inventory, remove the arrows from your active items and put them back in inventory, then close the menu and fire the now-empty bow. Don't forget to go back into inventory and re-equip the arrows, otherwise you'll end up fumbling for them later when something big and nasty is charging at you.

I thought there was a mod to do that at one time, but have no clue what it was called or where to find it.

It should work - perhaps try changing the key for de-nocking to something else (you do have MWSE/MGE?)

I do keep the arrow, but the shoot animation still plays.. and the denocking is the arrow simply dissapearing whilst my bow remains drawn. I was looking for something subtle like skyrims.

That might happen when Open MW is finished - Morrowind's engine doesn't support a thing like that.