Running

I haven't talked about why I started to run again, not really. I jokingly (and on nights like tonight, not so jokingly) say that my goal for running is not to die.

No, I'm not trying to live longer, I'm trying to not die while running. So far, I have succeeded. But, really, every time is a new adventure. I'm, dare I say it, getting a bit into this. Oh, I don't like it much, and the first 2 intervals are very, very close to hell, but, slowly, I'm getting there. I only sort of hate it.

Every time I finish a run, I post that I didn't die on Facebook. Several friends, including blogger friends, tell me that they are proud of me, and believe you me, I'm thankful. I'm still very slow, very out of shape, and desperately worried I will be the last person to finish the 5K race in March.

But the dying thing.

I quit smoking, for good, 3 weeks after Anna died - that was June 1. I took up running 6 months after - the start of November. I won't lie. I sat in my back yard, a week or so after her death, and I realized:

Anna was 36. Just 36. I am 31. We were not so far apart in age. We shared a medical condition, and we were both obese. I sat in my back yard, and with my breath catching in my throat, I realized that we are very alike.

I quit smoking. I tell people a shortened version of the truth - I tell them that I realized that I was then 30, and if I didn't quit then, I would smoke for the rest of my life, and I didn't want to do that. Mostly, I quit smoking because Anna died.

I started running at the start of November, because I need to lose weight. I need weight bearing exercise that increases my heart rate. I can't pretend, I can ignore, I can't deny. I need to be more healthy.

Part of running the St. Patrick's day race is to give myself a goal. I'm a goal kind of person. I like goals, knowing where I want to end up. I suspect I'll run more in the summer.

But also, as I have been thinking for the last few weeks, Anna's baby was due in 15 days. Anna's baby that she tried to conceive for 3 years. I think for most people, Anna's death overshadowed the death of her child. I understand. But I didn't get to go to a birth, I went to a funeral instead.

So, I am running for me, because I'm older, because I need to make some changes. But March?

March is for my friend, and her child. March is for those who finished their race, before I ever began.

Even Now.

There are times, even now, that I have to stop myself. I have to stop myself from typing Anna's name into Outlook, stop myself from picking up my work phone and calling her. We have an instant message client at work now, and I can imagine sending her random smilies.

There are times, even now, when I wonder what she thinks about something, and I am so very close to asking her, that I can almost hear her voice.

There are times, even now, when I form the words pulmonary embolism, and 36 in my mind, and my mind explores around them, and I cannot fathom them. I cannot reconcile Anna dead and gone.

I look at the note from her on my cabinet at work, and I cannot believe it wasn't just sent yesterday.

And I see the pictures of Emma's birthday party, and I cannot believe that Anna wasn't there.

And there are times, even now, when I am about to do something else, and I stop in at Facebook, and I see the odd shot, amidst all of them that her husband posted tonight, and I cannot stop. My eyes fill with tears and my hands come to my mouth.

And even now, I cannot believe how much I miss her, and how much this hurts.

Anna

You would think that I would know better. I, of all people, would know better, that only 2 months later, it would still hurt.

I was, mostly, OK to be back in Anna's city on Sunday.

But, you would think, I would know better.

The hurt of losing a friend doesn't end in 2 months. Raw memory doesn't fade that quickly, and when we turn those memories over this soon, there are still sharp edges to catch fragile skin that has only started to heal over. Sudden memory stings.

It stung to drive past Peter's Drive In, and remember seeing her in March. It stung to think of her, grasping my hand and telling me that she was sorry I wasn't pregnant that month.

It stung to think of her telling me that she was pregnant. It will sting on New Year's day, when that babe was due.

Still miss her like crazy.

I was there and she wasn't.

And it stings.

She is Gone

I think it was the way that Emma held her head this morning. It was not a trick of light, but a sudden emergence, almost. The way she held her head and her eyes and the position of her lips and Anna was there.

And I picked her up this morning, her small and compact body. She is at 4, perhaps too large to be held, and perhaps this is what she knows of death, that people pick her up and hold her very tightly.

I came in with a gaily striped bag, and she looked at me and sat on the stairs, her pink and orange and purple sundress billowing around her. And she looked at me, and she said "Is that a present?" They coy smile of a 4 year old that was the coy smile of a friend. A smile I saw when I went and bought Gerber Daisies for the two of us, and signed the card with something rude. The smile of a million comments, a hundred million shared glances.

I knelt down, looked at her and said "Why yes. It's a present for a little blond girl. Do you know any?"

She happily proclaimed that that was her. She dove in. I handed her the Pooh-Bear first, an old friend of mine, who wanted to come and live with her. She examined the books, and the toy and the graham crackers and the juice. Showing everything, before vanishing into the living room with the cat toy. Her father and I packed up the rest.

How does one tell a 4 year old that her mother is gone, and yet not. How does one tell a wee little girl that her mother is gone to a place that we cannot go, not yet, but that she lives and breathes in Emma? How does one tell a little girl that her mother is gone from this world, and yet remains within every fiber of Emma's being?

How does one tell a tiny child that all beautiful things live in memory, and that Anna, that my friend, lives in memory?

I saw the photo's at the memorial service, and I knew that I was looking at Anna, but I could see Emma in them. Peas in a pod. Like mother, like daughter.

And how does one say good-bye, proclaim that Anna is gone, when Emma comes sailing in?

She come sailing on the wind, her wings flashing in the sun,

On a journey just begun, she flies on, and in the passage of her flight,

Her song rings out through the night, full of laughter, full of light, she flies on.

Dust

I have but a few more things to do before leaving for Calgary. A bit of laundry, a trip to a store to put together a package of things for a little girl, some books, some crayons, for a little girl at her mum's funeral. In the back of my mind tasks race: the need to buy a dress for her, and breakfast with a friend, and the need to finish up some things. Change the bedding for the house sitter, and perhaps tidy the house a bit. I had wanted to get the perennials planted today, but I will settle for watering them in their green house pots. Packing.

I need to go and find the pooh bear from my childhood. An old friend to give to Emma. A scant and cold comfort. I should like to buy her a pony, a palomino, bright as a copper penny, with a blond mane and tail. Really, I want a pony for her like my first pony - Toby, small and sturdy, full of love, impossible to fall off of.

I think about Golden Retriever puppies, it is impossible to see a golden retriever puppy and be completely sad. And yet. And yet. There is perhaps one thing, but I know not the store to purchase it from - there is no store called 'back from the dead'.

And what of Allan. There is nothing I can buy for him. A puppy will not mend a mind broken by tragedy and grief. I cannot bring Anna back. I cannot even find a sympathy card. I cannot countenance trite stereotypes, slogans proclaiming peace and comfort, when I know there is none to be found. I can hear his words, "It's going to hurt on Sunday, when everything is done and she is gone, isn't it?" Isn't it? Won't it? And from the lump behind my throat I can only croak a yes. I cannot help him. Grief is the longest journey, and our hardest parts we walk on our own.

And me. Every morning this week, looking at my e-mail, waiting for that morning note about the traffic, about the thing that Emma did, about the weather. There is no email, simply a lingering sense, a painful realization that she is gone. I sent an email to her on Monday, knowing there was no one on the other end, but unable to bear that there was no one to send an email too. An email that said good-bye, acknowledged that there was no person to send this too, but a need to mark, to remember, to pause. Anna was here.

For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
1 Timothy - 6:7

Memento Mori

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

Today

Today I will get up and go into the office early. I will walk into my manager's office, and I will close her door, and I will, in careful, halting words begin a sentence that starts "Anna's husband called me early Saturday morning."

I have the information, noted on a sheet of paper, sitting on my kitchen table. I have answers to the how and the what questions, and I have time lines around the when. I can tell them what happened in bare sorts of terms. I have, in the back of my head, friends to call to get more medical information, to begin to unpack what the Medical Examiner tells us tomorrow.

And I have my list of people to contact: friends in other departments, someone in another city to pack up her work things, some one from HR to begin the process, because there will be forms.

Alan and I have discussed, in gentle, in timid, in awkward steps this morning, flowers and a trust account. I assured him that we are bankers, and we will take care of our own. Do not worry. Put the papers in a box, I will come in 6 weeks, and we will sort through them.

I will walk to the branch tomorrow, and I will see the assistant manager, an old colleague of mine, of ours, and I will tell him the news, and we will begin the process of winding up financial affairs.

I have been unquiet all weekend, since early Saturday morning. It has been a struggle to focus, to not ping pong from task to task. I have been making notes in my head, pacing around my house will making another call. This weekend seems as if it encompasses all the time there is in the world, as if it has not stopped. I have closed my eyes, laid my head down, and I wake up thinking of Anna. Emma. Allan. My lists.

And I will answer questions, and provide these answers and tick things off my list, and it will seem that when I start all of this off today, that conversation that begins "On Saturday", and it will not seem like it is Monday today, I swear to you, I have been living in Saturday for a long time now.

Mother's Day

I had other thoughts for today, but given the events of yesterday, they have flown from my mind.

And somewhere in Calgary today there is a little blonde girl who cannot give the card and the craft she made, to her mother. Somewhere in Calgary today there is a little girl named Emma, who loves to chatter who is silent and lost and alone.

And somewhere in Calgary there is a mother who will bury her daughter and her second grandchild, and who will not hear any greetings on this day.

Somewhere there is a father and a husband - a good and kind and quiet and gentle man who is lost and broken.

And in heaven today, Anna is smiling.

And I do not understand.

Banana

I met Anna just over 3 years ago. In fact, I sneezed all over her. It was one of those horrible sneezes, and as someone who had just started with White Guys in Blue Ties, Inc. it was beyond humiliating. And she smiled at me, and laughed and said, "Oh, I'm a mum. I've had worse done."

And I say, over and over to myself today, that Anna died last night. She had a heart attack. She's gone.

Anna, mother of Emma, Wife of Alan, friend of mine. Anna who was 36. Anna Banana. Anna who emailed me on Monday to tell me that she was pregnant again, after a year of trying, Anna -friend of mine is dead. She had a heart attack, and she is gone.

Over and over I say it to myself, trying to make it real.