Oceanview

Looking out at the sunrise-lit beach from the ledge at the back of the pier, I felt the tears start to swell again. “Should I just let go and have a good cry here?” I wondered. I certainly had enough to cry about, with the memory of my Uncle’s funeral still fresh from two days prior. I had known this would be an emotional day, as it also happened to be 6 months to the day after the death of my best friend. 

When I signed up to run the marathon, I hadn’t particularly noticed the date. I just needed some motivation to get back to running, and I had successfully run this one years before. I got a small thrill telling Alex, my new romantic interest, that I’d signed up, knowing how close they lived to the event. I hadn’t been to their house yet, we were just starting to actually date and we lived an hour’s drive apart. As our relationship had drawn closer, with daily emails “just to check in” and then more frequent text messages, they happened to ask whether I got emotional at race finishes. “Yes, sometimes” I replied, remembering the surprising hot tears as I was finishing my first half-ironman distance triathlon. That’s when I realized that the event date was an anniversary of sorts of that awful day when the cancer finally took the friend I’d relied on since elementary school.

Despite having said goodbye on the first trip, I hadn’t expected Uncle Daniel to die so quickly. Looking back, he had seemed a bit frail at my niece’s wedding, shivering in the morning chill at the huge house we had all shared and missing my Aunt who hadn’t been well enough to make the trip. That house had an ocean view as well, I recalled wryly. How could two similar views evoke such different reactions? Or did one reaction always have to follow the other, like the highs and lows of the ocean tides?

Traveling back after the funeral the day before, I wasn’t at all sure I would actually be able to motivate myself to show up for this run. The two trips in 3 weeks had disrupted my final training plans, and I never slept well the night before a race. Still, I set my alarm for o’dark thirty and drove to the start. I parked and walked to the pier and sank onto the ledge, where I now found myself still trying to find the motivation to tear myself away from the increasingly beautiful view and walk those final steps over to the starting line.

When I was speaking in the church at his funeral, I tried my best to summon the strength that my Uncle had radiated at Marin’s funeral. He had stood by me on the boat to help scatter the ashes, just as he had stood by Marin years before at the funeral of Marin’s dad, my Uncle’s best friend. Only now with the insight of 6 months of walking with my own grief could I realize how difficult it must have been for him to do that when his heart was also breaking. And now this man, who had raised me as much as my own parents had, was gone. I wouldn’t hear his voice congratulating me on the marathon finish, my first in over a decade. But I was absolutely determined to once again summon the strength I needed to finish running strong.

With Marin it was different. We’d laughed at first about the cancer, saying we were going to “egg Cancer’s house” and making other displays of bravado in the face of the disfiguring surgeries and skin-searing radiation. When the end became inevitable, I couldn’t disagree with the statement that still stuck with me “I have nothing pleasurable left to live for, I can’t eat, I can’t do my sports, I can’t have sex, and I don’t want any more treatments”. Just a nod and a hug and a final trip home to await the end. That was Marin’s time, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to what it meant to me to lose this friend who seemed as much a part of me as one of my own personalities. What kind of person was I without Marin in my life? Who could make me laugh like that again?

I smiled, remembering how I had shared my running progress with Alex. When we first met, on a group adventure among mutual friends, I hadn’t been able to make myself run for a couple of months. There was something about the grieving process that seemed to prevent me from being able to push myself beyond a walking pace. Perhaps it was the pathetic panting during any expended effort being too much a reminder of Marin’s labored breathing. Or was it the too familiar elevated heart beat of anxiety that prevented me from simply pushing off? I had hiked on the day we met, and Alex was part of another group who ran ahead and back on scouting forays. We talked about Marin afterwards among friends, and while Alex picked up on my obvious grieving, there was nonetheless a spark of attraction. As I started training again, it seemed natural to share my newly reacquired distances with this experienced runner. Running started to feel good again, even though I was much slower than I had been. My new crush encouraged me towards this marathon goal and cheered my milestones with me. 

I took one last breath and lifted my head and arms from my knees. Standing up, I turned towards the pier and the start of the race. This run was going to take everything I had, physically and likely emotionally as well. Even though I didn’t expect a fast time or have anything to prove to anyone else in this race, I had enough pride that I didn’t want to have to walk or, heaven forbid, miss the cut off time for the marathon.

 I reminded myself that long races have high and low points, just like life and tides do. I have always gained calm and balance from seeing the ocean, and this marathon course had plenty of ocean views to help carry me through. With one last glance over my shoulder at the view, I mentally assured both Uncle Bob and Marin that I’d let them know when I finished. I know how they both care about me, and I need to believe that hasn’t ended with their lives. And I was fairly confident that Alex was going to meet me at the end to help see me across the finish line and perhaps just a little further.