The Half Marathon
I’m getting ready to run my race on Sunday, and I couldn’t be less prepared. I ran all summer, and then school started and I found less and less time, and even less energy….but I’m committed, so I’ll run anyhow. It’s been a tough week. I’ve had a lot of crying bouts, that have just kind of crept up on me.
I had decided some time ago that I would run with Abbey’s iPod. I hadn’t turned it on since the emergency responders and police officers turned it off the morning that I found her. When I plugged it in today, I felt a tidal wave of emotions that put me back there that morning.
I remember hearing her iPod that morning when I found her…it was a soft song coming through her small speakers, but I can’t remember which song it was. I just remember that it became confused with what I was trying to understand and to make sense of…because nothing that morning made sense. Nothing.
There are things that I think about very privately, that I don’t typically share with anyone. Sometimes those things torture me. When I turned on that little purple iPod and started scrolling through her music, her pictures….I started sifting through those torturous thoughts…was she crying when she died? Did she die thinking that no one loved her? My last words to her were words reprimanding her for not having done her laundry before bedtime. It was an awful weekend to begin with…all of us were completely out of sorts. Her cat that she adored was hit by a car the Friday that preceded the Sunday that she died. Those last words of mine weigh on me heavily. I wonder if the last song that she heard was a song that she loved. I wonder at all those times I have comforted her…and yet was not there in the end…to save her. Most of all, I wonder how I am supposed to accept this….because for some reason I can’t.
Sometimes I think of her and she’s so ethereal…and other times, it’s as though I could walk into her room and see her in there doing her thing, or sitting at the dining room table chatting up her friends on Facebook…but I cannot accept that she is not going to grow up…I can’t explain it, but I can’t move on from it.
It was hard turning on her little iPod today…I not sure which will be harder on Sunday…listening to all of her music or trying to finish a 13 mile race that I have not properly prepared for.
A fellow runner to another: I hope you had a good run today. I look forward to hearing about it. A fellow parent to another: my heart aches for you. Take care Java.
Yes, Java, I pretty much ditto Adam’s comment. About this, “Most of all, I wonder how I am supposed to accept this….because for some reason I can’t.” You know what? I don’t think that one ever can “accept.” I know that it is written up as that last step of the cycle of grieving, “acceptance,” but I think there has to be a new word given to that. I have found it is less “acceptance” (who can EVER “accept” death, especially the kind that is so unexpected and life-upending?) and more just continually making peace with it.
I don’t think I will ever just “accept” that I lost a baby halfway through pregnancy, a son that would have been almost 18 years old by now. No, I will never accept that I held his little lifeless body that would never grow up. And this is going on just over 18 years ago.
No, I just have come to peace with it.
Yours is harder. No doubt about that — not that I am trying to get into “grading grief,” but anyone could see yours is harder in that you have things like an iPod to remind you. You had a much longer relationship with your daughter than I did with my son.
It’s too soon to have that kind of peace, though. The kind that comes to some place of understanding that the person is gone, and will not be back. It *does* come to peace. I know, from my step aunt and step uncle whose daughter died suddenly in her sleep at the age of 21 from a brain aneurysm. They have come to a kind of peace with it. But they miss her every day, still.
Anyway. Good luck with the race. I am glad you are doing it, prepared or unprepared! Sometimes you just gotta do things, prepared for them or not, huh. Big hug.
I meant to finish my sentence here: “The kind that comes to some place of understanding that the person is gone, and will not be back.” That kind of understanding only happens with time.
That’s what I meant to write. This is one of those things that just takes a helluva lot of time, and it pretty much dominates your life, until one day, after a long while, you wake up and realize it is not dominating quite so much as it once did. But that place, my dear, is *years* from now. Not to be scary or a downer or anything, it just does take years, and it is incremental and painfully slow. But it DOES COME. Just keep taking care of yourself and allowing yourself to feel what you feel when you feel it & it does get better…
I was thinking of you and I hope your race went ok.
Having recently lost my brother to suicide, this post was very close to my heart.
I do feel a connection with him when I listen to his favourite music.
I hope the same holds true for you.
I am so sorry that Abbey has left this life. She was Azi’s first real friend. I was very sorry that we did not keep in touch better when we moved from our little houses next door.
Thanks for friending me over on Facebook. And Thank you for sharing so deeply and eloquently here. I’ll be keeping you and your family in my thoughts and prayers.
Heather:
Thank you and I’m sorry to learn of your brother. The race went well. The course was so very beautiful and I finished! I actually enjoyed it…the music was tough but it definitely helped me to push through.
Theresa:
Thank you. I think of your family often. It makes me smile to look at all the pictures of Azi and Abbey together when they were so little. He was her first best friend. It has been a God awful year…but we are plugging through. Sometimes one step forward and 20 steps back. I hope the kiddos are doing well. It’s so great to reconnect with you. Catina
You make me stronger every time I read your writings. My heart breaks for what your family has gone through in the last year and that we can’t be there to hold you and talk to you. I think about Abby whenever I want to throddle my kids for being kids. I remember that their lives are precious and I should be grateful for any time that I get to spend with them. You are holding up the world for me. Love you!