It's called the Son Run and it's only in its second year and it benefits uninsured cancer patients. I'm sure if you're reading this you know me personally and you knew my mom personally and you know that she was an uninsured cancer patient. If you didn't, now you know.
We're 34 minutes short of my mom's 62nd birthday. Who gets old and dies before their 62nd birthday? It seems that 62 should be an age when people are looking at retirement... retirement is really close and it's like a second youth. A time that you finally have the time and the money to do all the things you dreamt of doing your whole life but didn't because of money or kids or time or whatever. Also, the time you begin to have grandkids, possibly the greatest thing about having kids. My mom missed out on all of that. She never retired, she just went on disability. She was diagnosed when her first and only grandchild was two. She didn't get to really relish being a grandma because she was always too sick. I remember not being able to leave him with her because she was too weak to lift him out of his crib.
This isn't intended to be about my mother's illness or death or what she missed out on. I may have had a glass too many of pinot noir. This is intended to be about my triumph in running the 5k.
I learned a great deal from my mom. I am similar to her in many ways. My dedication to my health is not one of them. She wasn't terribly unhealthy, but she never took a proactive stance towards her body and her health. Sometimes I resent her for this. Sometimes I think if she had taken better care of herself, she wouldn't have gotten cancer and wouldn't be dead. This is one of the reasons I have become increasingly dedicated to preserving my health. In a way, I did learn it from her. I learned it from her in more of a "what not to do" way. The strange thing is, she died of lung cancer, but she quit smoking when she got pregnant with me, over 25 years ago. Admittedly, my obsession with my nutrition/exercise is largely due to vanity. But I can't exclude the effect that watching my mom get treatment, fight, and ultimately fail to prevail had on me. As God is my witness, I will do whatever I can to ensure my son will never go through with me what I went through with my mom.
So, back to the 5k. I've only ever run one once before, and I was drunk then and I think I walked most of it. So I consider this my first one. Sure, I work out often, but whenever you require your body to do something new, no matter what shape it's in, it's going to throw a fit. And throw a fit my body did. My ankles ached before we left the parking lot.
As I circled the loop, with my eardrum-damaging earphones in on high volume, listening to The Givers with their workout-inspiring single, "Up Up Up", I thought of my mom. Fortunately, the energy it took to keep my legs in motion limited the cognitive power of brain, almost to the perfect point of simple, clear thoughts without the cloud of overthinking and overanalyzing which usually impedes my thoughts. So, I thought of my mom in simple terms. I thought of her face; I pictured her smiling face at the finish line with a look of pride. I imagined her looking down from heaven, proud of me for running this race. Proud of me for running the race of life I run every day out of dedication to myself and to my son. I thought of her health and why I do the things I do to take care of myself; largely out of respect for her. I thought of the one-year anniversary of her death which passed last month and her second birthday I will spend without her. That's tomorrow, which makes all of this all that much more relevant. I thought of my sister. Certainly, she is not the only family I have left, but she is the closest family, save my son, that I have left. I miss her deeply, especially during these difficult times. I often wish she were here with me to share them with me in a way she just simply can't over the phone.
I finished the race. I did it. I did it without any help from anyone; I did it based on my own strength and determination. I see it, a bit, as a metaphor for my life. I run and I run and usually I feel like I'm not getting anywhere and a lot of the time I want to quit and I don't see the point. But I keep going, for whatever reason, whether it's my son or my mom or my sister or my man, and once in a while there's a small victory, like a finish line where strangers cheer for you and someone hands you some water and a raffle ticket. Of course, in real life, after that small victory, you hardly get a chance to catch your breath before there's a new race to run. Sometimes, I feel like I'm running two or three races at once, and if I finish one, there's another waiting to begin. However, this small victory this morning, in running and finishing my first 5k in 29 minutes (7th in my age group, yeah!) was a symbolic victory for me. I'm encouraged that I can run and finish any race whose start line is placed in my path. And, goddammit, I'll do it for the right reasons and with my head held high. And... go!
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