Heavy heart
Even the best heart-rate monitor couldn't have measured what was going on inside my heart as I ran this afternoon.
It was heavy.
In the minutes before I set out for another winter maintenance run, I received a phone call from my best friend. I had been expecting a call from him. His mother was gravely ill and Greatest Girlfriend and I had volunteered to watch his three children tonight so that his wife could join him at his mother's place.
"My mom passed away," he said.
The words cut through me.
His mother's death hadn't been unexpected. She recently discovered she had cancer. Pancreatic cancer at that. It's among the most viciously aggressive forms of cancer. I knew that much when he informed me of her plight last month. The prognosis wasn't good. She probably wouldn't make it far into 2006.
The cancer wouldn't wait that longer. It took her swiftly and prematurely -- she was only 68 -- from her two adult sons.
I was at a loss for words to somehow comfort my friend today. It seems I've usually been the grieving person whom others have unsuccessfully tried to comfort.
What can you really say at such a time? Words failed me. There was nothing I could possibly verbalize to convey my sympathy.
Usually running focuses my mind. I'm at my most creative, my most cogitative, my most introspective when I run. Running did nothing to help me formulate sufficient words of sympathy.
It helped me cope, though. It always does.
I swallowed hard and fought back tears as I began my run. It surprised me to be so profoundly affected by the passing of my best friend's mother.
What was it that seared my heart? Was it sympathy, empathy for my friend? Was it reminder of the fragility of human life? Was it the thought that someday I might face the loss of my own mother?
I couldn't pinpoint the cause. It was likely a combination of all these things and possibly additional others. Whatever it was, it resulted in a most unusual run for me. My muscles and joints somehow carried me while the rest of me was on auto-pilot.
I was overcome by a flood of memories.
My friend's mother -- a single parent like my own mother -- welcomed me into their home so often while I was growing up. As a teenager, I spent more time at their house than I did anyplace outside of my own home.
There were my friend's raucous sleepover parties. The late nights of playing Strat-o-matic baseball in their living room and at their kitchen table. The house-rattling, full-contact Nerf basketball games in my friend's upstairs bedroom. Those precious summer days during our late teens/early 20s when my friend and I engaged in epic fast-pitch whiffleball battles in their driveway, with the garage door taking a merciless beating as our backstop. She cheerfully accepted it all.
His mother helped provide me with memories that will never escape me. The birthday parties she threw for my friend in summers prior to seventh- and eighth-grade years, when she hauled a group of young boys to the St. Croix River, where they would play football on sandbars, have mud fights in the water and eat as much food as they could shove into their faces. She attended so many of our baseball games, cheering wildly with my mother and other parents as we transformed ourselves over the course of three seasons from a winless squad to an undefeated team. She allowed me to join her son and her on a camping trip when I was 15. To this day it's the only time I've been camping. She let me come along when they went mushroom picking, something I also had never done and likely never will again.
She also was there to pick up her son, me and another friend from the airport in 1993 as we returned home from a California vacation that I childishly allowed to strain my friendships for almost four years.
My feet kept moving today, somehow carrying through my run. Meanwhile, my mind kept racing. Today's run wasn't about the run. It was about catharsis. It was about grieving. For once, it didn't matter what how my body felt or my watch told me.
Time was unimportant to today. Except, of course, the time my friend's mother shared with me throughout the years.
Thanks for the memories, Carol. Rest in peace.
It was heavy.
In the minutes before I set out for another winter maintenance run, I received a phone call from my best friend. I had been expecting a call from him. His mother was gravely ill and Greatest Girlfriend and I had volunteered to watch his three children tonight so that his wife could join him at his mother's place.
"My mom passed away," he said.
The words cut through me.
His mother's death hadn't been unexpected. She recently discovered she had cancer. Pancreatic cancer at that. It's among the most viciously aggressive forms of cancer. I knew that much when he informed me of her plight last month. The prognosis wasn't good. She probably wouldn't make it far into 2006.
The cancer wouldn't wait that longer. It took her swiftly and prematurely -- she was only 68 -- from her two adult sons.
I was at a loss for words to somehow comfort my friend today. It seems I've usually been the grieving person whom others have unsuccessfully tried to comfort.
What can you really say at such a time? Words failed me. There was nothing I could possibly verbalize to convey my sympathy.
Usually running focuses my mind. I'm at my most creative, my most cogitative, my most introspective when I run. Running did nothing to help me formulate sufficient words of sympathy.
It helped me cope, though. It always does.
I swallowed hard and fought back tears as I began my run. It surprised me to be so profoundly affected by the passing of my best friend's mother.
What was it that seared my heart? Was it sympathy, empathy for my friend? Was it reminder of the fragility of human life? Was it the thought that someday I might face the loss of my own mother?
I couldn't pinpoint the cause. It was likely a combination of all these things and possibly additional others. Whatever it was, it resulted in a most unusual run for me. My muscles and joints somehow carried me while the rest of me was on auto-pilot.
I was overcome by a flood of memories.
My friend's mother -- a single parent like my own mother -- welcomed me into their home so often while I was growing up. As a teenager, I spent more time at their house than I did anyplace outside of my own home.
There were my friend's raucous sleepover parties. The late nights of playing Strat-o-matic baseball in their living room and at their kitchen table. The house-rattling, full-contact Nerf basketball games in my friend's upstairs bedroom. Those precious summer days during our late teens/early 20s when my friend and I engaged in epic fast-pitch whiffleball battles in their driveway, with the garage door taking a merciless beating as our backstop. She cheerfully accepted it all.
His mother helped provide me with memories that will never escape me. The birthday parties she threw for my friend in summers prior to seventh- and eighth-grade years, when she hauled a group of young boys to the St. Croix River, where they would play football on sandbars, have mud fights in the water and eat as much food as they could shove into their faces. She attended so many of our baseball games, cheering wildly with my mother and other parents as we transformed ourselves over the course of three seasons from a winless squad to an undefeated team. She allowed me to join her son and her on a camping trip when I was 15. To this day it's the only time I've been camping. She let me come along when they went mushroom picking, something I also had never done and likely never will again.
She also was there to pick up her son, me and another friend from the airport in 1993 as we returned home from a California vacation that I childishly allowed to strain my friendships for almost four years.
My feet kept moving today, somehow carrying through my run. Meanwhile, my mind kept racing. Today's run wasn't about the run. It was about catharsis. It was about grieving. For once, it didn't matter what how my body felt or my watch told me.
Time was unimportant to today. Except, of course, the time my friend's mother shared with me throughout the years.
Thanks for the memories, Carol. Rest in peace.
posted by RTG at 9:47 PM
2 Comments:
I'm so sorry. We can never be prepared; even when we think we are.
My best friend has Stage 4 Lymphoma. She's 43.
That was a beautiful tribute to a life well lived. She taught you some important lessons... sounds like how to enjoy your life was a great one.
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