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COVID, week 58 + seismic

COVID, week 58 + seismic

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It’s the theme of the past seven days since I last wrote: seismic. 

Today would be John’s 58th birthday. 

It’s a weird feeling, like you’re forgetting to do something, when someone you love, who has recently died, has a birthday. 

There’s no group text with the birthday gal/guy and all your mutual friends, with everyone heaping on their birthday wishes; no rash commentary about aging (or for runners, no “hey at least I gained a couple minutes on my BQ window!” or “I moved up an AG!”); nothing like that. 

Instead, the group text is with everyone else, everyone but the birthday person, acknowledging how bizarre and unfair it is that the deceased isn’t here for his or her birthday. Pretty much everyone’s birthday in 2020 was muted, dimmed, by the pandemic; I doubt John thought that his “pandemic birthday” would be his last. 

It’s brutal. 

To memorialize John and celebrate what would have been his 58th birthday today, on April 21, all of us from our FF BB ‘10 group decided we’d run 4.21 miles and then jump on a Google Meet chat tonight to pay our respects. 

I ran my typical workweek route from home through ARP, turning around a little later than usual because I had a little more pep in my step, and simply enjoyed the morning, listening to a SWAP podcast for the first ~30’ and then the birdsong for the balance, the ~3.8mi to get back home. It was lovely. I thought of him the entire time.  

from this morning’s run at 4.21 miles

long live John. -his FF BB fanclub harem

*

In the past seven days since my last writing, life has begun to shift. Last week Thursday, I was one of the 12,000 (!) people vaccinated at Levi’s Stadium on April 15, the original day that the state of California increased vaccine availability to everyone 16 years+; I say the “original day” because I guess the county or state moved it to 4/14 midweek, but by then I had already secured the appointment. 

I got to spend close to 3 hours at Levi’s Stadium with thousands of my best stranger friends as we moved through queue, after queue, after queue to get our Pfizer shot. 

It was amazing. I was so excited and happy to be there. I would have brought at least A with me so she could witness history being made with this large-scale public vaccination campaign, but alas, she was still in school when I left. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t bring my kids because they would have been bored to tears and over it within the first twenty minutes, ha. 

4/15/21 – Pfizer shot 1

Honestly, it was like being in line at Disneyland, multiplied by being in line for TSA, multiplied by going through customs for international travel, multiplied by being at the DMV. I kept thinking to myself that if this were a ride at Disneyland, we would all agree that it’s pretty fast-moving. We rarely stood still. (And of course, C, who got his shot at the same place just a couple days later, was in and out in fifteen minutes. Seriously!!?) 

In my tribute to John a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I rarely run on the GRT anymore but that from now on, in the infrequent chances I were there, I’d think of him and of our ten-miles-in-the-pouring-rain run wherein we ran to Levi’s so he could see it up close. How interesting that out of anywhere I could have gone to get my COVID vaccine, I went to Levi’s. For sure there are specific considerations that went into play that made me go there — appointment availability, location, ease, all that stuff — but still. It makes me wonder. 

I would have loved to tell John that I got vaccinated there.

*

Last thing. I think yesterday’s ‘guilty’ verdicts for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for over 9 minutes — which a seventeen year-old, Darnella Frazier, documented on her phone, whose video spread around the world last Memorial Day and helped advance a national (international) reckoning supporting Black Lives Matter — I think yesterday’s ‘guilty’ verdicts have already become something seared into our collective memory. Where were you when you heard the verdict? (Costco, grocery shopping, glued to NYT). 

It is progress, advancement. 

More than anything, it’s accountability. It’s an exception to the exception, but finally, there is accountability.

It is horrific and inexcusable that it came at the cost of human life and in no way does it atone for the countless other Black and Brown people’s lives lost at the hands of a white supremacist society, generally, or at the hands of law enforcement officers, specifically. We can’t bring back those we’ve lost, unfortunately. 

Nonetheless, it’s a step — roger that, a seismic step —  in the right direction. 

COVID, week 57 + it keeps on

COVID, week 57 + it keeps on

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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?

almost positive this whole banana debate was after this race

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. 

*

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.