Running Through the Circle of Life

My grandmother died last night. I went for a run this morning. I didn't run in honor of her--a dainty woman, always in dresses, she didn't understand why anybody would run--but I ran because she, a mother of four, was gone. Really my step-grandmother, she was 93, had been struggling for months and had a life so inimitable, it's worth a novel. So I wasn't nauseous with grief for her. She was ready for heaven. But I was nauseous with the idea that mothers die, that my stepdad no longer has a mother, an anchor.

Nearly four decades into my life, I'm as naïve as I was at age eight. I'm well aware of the delicate circle of life, but certain unsavory aspects of it--kids getting cancer, women being beaten and raped, gratuitous killing of anybody--pummel me no matter how anonymous the victim is or how many times I've heard a similar story. Since I've had kids, mothers who die is added to that list. My husband lost his mother when he was only eight, and I look at Amelia, now six, and think: I'd know her for just two more years? I can't stomach the thought.

Running doesn't cure anything, of course. But it's a temporary fix. It's raw and undiscriminating, just like disease and tragedy. It makes your blood flow, your lungs fill, your rhythm return. It makes you feel in charge, like you could change something if you only set your mind to it. It lets you taste life.

As I ran, I wondered if I would even be able to summon the energy to get out of bed, let alone run, when my (very healthy, very lively) mom dies. When she was on yoga retreat recently for a week in Mexico, and I couldn't dial her number for our daily, banal, five-minute check-in, I felt adrift and lonely. I can't imagine years of that feeling. She doesn't really understand why I run so much either. But without sounding too morbid--or wishing away time--I'm pretty sure I'd run the day of her funeral.

Because sometimes running is the only thing do to when you don't know what to do.