One Step at a Time

I’ve done a lot of crying this week. And I know I’m not alone.

On a slight side note, I’ve been doing quite a bit of running lately, which is often, inconveniently, where many brilliant ideas for blog posts hit me. Of course, these ideas are gone as soon as my endorphins subside. I’ve sat down to write several times in the last few days and though the emotions ran high, the words just wouldn’t come. Even now, I’m hesitant, because everything is choppy and fragmented and there’s so much swirling in my head but nothing is landing.

I’m going to start with myself. I am supposed to be running a marathon in a month, for which I’ve been doing my usual type of training (which is to say, relaxed). My schedule as a stay-at-home mom of four kids has complicated things a little bit, as I knew it would, and was a pressure I was ready to work with. But the weather has been shit. Also, we’re apparently experiencing an unprecedented nationwide cold and flu pandemic which all the elderberry syrup in North Carolina hasn’t completely protected this house against. Then there’s this little business of my husband’s new part-time job, which he didn’t have a year ago when I registered extra early for the race, in order to pay the lowest price possible. Weirdly, all of these things seemed manageable, until about a month ago, when my knee started to hurt and swell after every run.

I haven’t made any major cancelation decisions yet, and I’m taking things one day at a time, adjusting training, nursing this injury, and pretending to have a mental toughness I’ve never had and probably won’t develop in life. But I’m also admitting that the entire thing has become a little more emotional than I wanted it to be. If you’ve ever dedicated a significant amount of time to something in your life that you then didn’t get to see come to fruition, you know the kind of emotional I’m talking about. Grief.

I say all this, selfishly, and transition to another topic that makes my suburban-stay-at-home-thirty-six-year-old-lazy-runner-grief seem exactly as big of a deal as it is. Because on Monday, John and I learned that our first friends in North Carolina (our longest co-friendship as a married couple) had given birth to a baby boy who died a few hours later. Complications in the pregnancy presented themselves at 20 weeks, and this family of faith shared their story immediately and moved forward in hopeful expectation of a miracle, medical or otherwise. It is my understanding that this was entirely possible, and John and I joined them and many others in praying with the same expectations.

This isn’t really my story to tell and I haven’t even asked permission to share it so I want to be brief and delicate in the telling of it. The boy was born a few weeks early and called back to Heaven a few hours later. This baby has three older brothers who were also eagerly awaiting his arrival.

Absolutely everything is more real because I am a mother.

And now, Florida. Another mass school shooting. The week of flooded news-feeds calling for action, activism, gun control, solutions, outrage, sadness, despair, and the promise not to be numb while we admittedly fight being numb. I’m a little numb.

But this is what we do, right? If we’re healthy? This is what we do when grief from any angle slams us on our butts and reminds us of our humanity, the ugly and difficult side of it. If we’re lucky, we turn outward and draw close to others. We talk, cry, hold each other, silently sit close to one another, pause a little longer with a little more patience and perspective than we had yesterday. Some people paint. Others sing. I write.

Then, one foot goes in front of the other. Grocery lists get made, school buses arrive, essays get written and papers get signed, and sock situations for the Daddy daughter dance are fought over but eventually decided upon. And the grief worm lingers, and creeps back at the weirdest times. For me, twice this week on a spinning bike in the middle of the fitness room while Lady Gaga blasted in my ear buds.

I don’t have any solutions. I don’t have any miraculous words of wisdom. All I have are some universally shared emotions that I hope bring me closer to others, expand my empathy, allow me to feel a little harder, a little deeper.

This post comes without any expectations. I am desperate to also ignore that creeping monster of snap-comparison. The one that says, “How dare you, your situation is nothing compared to so many others.” (Julia Cameron would label this a blurt and force me to face-it, then turn it into an affirmation.)

I’m by no means proclaiming my own inner turmoil to be any more or any less what someone else is currently facing. I’m simply sharing today because I’m grieving, and this is what I know how to do.