Running Ruminations

Thank you for your kind responses, DMs, texts, messages, everything about John in the past week. It means a lot. 

Grieving is such a weird process. It comes and goes, unpredictably, at times when it’s most unexpected. 

Case in point: I have found myself recalling random memories and conversations with John at the weirdest times since his funeral last Tuesday — like when I bought bananas from Costco recently, some that were super, super green and in no way edible for at least a week.

I usually buy two bunches of bananas at a time, some that are yellow and ready for smoothies right now, and some that aren’t so ripe but will be good in a week’s time or so. We go through a lot of bananas in this household. 

For whatever reason though, when I recently bought bananas, immediately my mind went to a conversation with John and others after what had to have been the Hot Chocolate ‘09 race in Chicago in Grant Park. A conversation with a friend about produce more than a decade ago? Seriously?

I remember that we were all standing around at the finishers’ chute with all the food the volunteers gave us. It was in early November, on my birthday, and it was kinda frigid outside. We all had our arms full of post-race nosh, and John, others, and I were having a heated, friendly debate over which types of bananas were best: the rock-hard, obviously under-ripe green ones (his favorite) or the ones more yellow and softer (mine). I think I must have been complaining that volunteers were passing out immature, inedible bananas, while John argued the opposite, saying that AT LAST a race finally got it right! 

Clearly, I have bought bananas in the past eleven years — including the nasty green ones — but it wasn’t until John’s death that I thought of him when I found myself buying green bananas. 

Not sure what it means. It’s strange. 

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I think as humans, we rationally know that the world keeps spinning, and life goes on, no matter the circumstances in our personal lives — including the death of someone we love — but it’s still a startling realization to come to terms with. 

Good stuff continues to happen, even though John’s no longer here to see or experience it — more people are getting COVID vaccines than ever before, fewer people are getting or dying from COVID (at least in these parts), kids are slowly getting back into school — as well as the bad, unfortunately — systemic racism is still killing unarmed black men (Daunte Wright being the latest, in Minnesota, not far from where George Floyd was killed last May), this damn pandemic won’t end, so many people are still subscribing to the alternate realities that many conservative politicians peddle — I mean, take your pick. There’s a lot, always, still.      

Knowing this, that the world keeps spinning, that good and bad alike both keep happening, even though John’s not here to observe and experience and analyze, is simultaneously comforting and maddening. It’s a solemn reminder, kinda like that trite commentary that “to the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you may be the world.” 

I think in this way, grief can be fairly levelling; you don’t have to necessarily know the person to know what the loss feels like. Most people know the sucker-punch feeling, the waves of sadness, the catch in your throat that grieving fosters. 

And this is where running comes in. The ability to process, to experience the whiplash of feelings, to simply have an opportunity to (very uncomfortably) sit and marinate in what is an unfortunate-but-normal part of human existence: running affords time and space to do all of the above. 

I am obviously grateful for the health and capacity to do it and for the outlet, itself.