36

On surviving an extra shitty holiday.

I was trudging up the thousand foot climb with the sensation of heavy lead pulsing through my bloodstream. My legs felt like someone had fixed an anvil to my shoelaces. It was hard to think about anything but the overwhelming fatigue and pain that I had invited into my body. 

I was 25 miles into a 36 mile run – and that was why I was out here – to feel something other than the emotional turmoil that I had been dreading for weeks.

It was my 36th birthday – and the first one without my mother. She passed away in January after an aggressive uterine cancer took her life and took her from us, leaving us motherless for everything from the very mundane to the very special.

The threat of my first birthday without my mom had loomed on the horizon like a category 5 hurricane warning for all of October – and plenty of the months leading up to it, too.

Birthdays and many other holidays are generally not days that are all that meaningful to me – but they have become important in the way they taunt me about the huge crater that’s ruptured in my life since her death nine months ago. They’ve gone from occasions defined by different shaped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the candy aisle to the days when all I can think about is how many organs I’d donate for one more holiday with my mom.

I’ve learned that there are all kinds of milestones that are acutely painful in the wake of loss. The things that inflame the searing burn in your heart. The days on the calendar that stab you with memories from start to finish. And remind you that the time for memory-making has expired.

Mother’s Day, my mom’s 67th birthday in August, and now my own birthday have been some of my personal triggers. And I’m bracing myself for the rapidly approaching winter holidays to feel just as wretched.

They’ve all been days that are tormenting in the anticipation of them and days that can feel impossible to bear when they strike. To make it through them can be an exercise in emotional survival.

I didn’t want to spend every waking second of my birthday dwelling on the absence of my mom, which would be easy to do since it would be so face-slappingly noticeable. My mom always wanted to shower us with her extraordinary love – and she was exceptionally good at doing that in her silly mom ways on our birthdays: with a gushing facebook post full of photos of my young and heavily freckled self, with the most perfect card that always arrived days early - just in case, and with phone calls and texts starting before sunrise. Any way she could find to spend our birthdays telling everyone who would listen just how much her life changed for the best when my brother and I came into it. She was the most adorable mother.

I miss that fierce motherly love every single day – but I knew my longing for her would just bowl me over on that late October day – as I looked at the empty mailbox, and scrolled facebook for the post I wouldn’t see, and stared at my phone all day missing the one text I wanted the most.

So I decided to run my age around Eugene to distract myself from my grief, which also felt like a fitting way to spend the day as it is something my mother absolutely would’ve done. She biked 65 miles to celebrate her last birthday before she was diagnosed with cancer. The idea of a like mother, like daughter birthday felt like the most special way I could spend my first one without her.

The crisp fall air snapped me into being fully present as I started my long run. Streaks of sunlight spilled through the golden foliage that lined the trail. And the cold dirt padded my footfalls, playfully weaving through the dense forest that’s perched above Eugene.

It immediately felt comforting to be running on a trail through the bright October morning. Running was something my mom and I shared and I felt that bond floating forward with me. The rhythm of my stride was soothing. The peaceful woods were grounding. The soft dirt cradled me through every step. And my mind was grateful to have several hours of distractions that would help me get through such a hard day.

As I rounded a sharp bend in the trail, I thought about why I was out there. I looked up at the bright fall sky and said a few words to my mom.

“This is for you,” I whispered, sheltering my audible grief from any potential stranger up ahead on the trail. “I’m out here to take care of myself, just like you would want me to.”

I told her how much I love and miss her and then I let the hot tears that charged my face to break free, allowing myself to feel some of the searing sadness I’d been dreading for weeks.

A very real part of grief is weathering the pain. The weathering of the pain is so unavoidable and so necessary when dealing with loss – but another important part of grief is doing what we can to take care of ourselves, which sometimes means giving ourselves a break from the hardest emotions. So we don’t have to spend every second of our hardest days knee-deep in an alligator pit, rumbling with our fiercest grief.

And so I let the run offer me what I needed – a chance to take a break from the stabbing pain.

I got that break as the miles ticked by. As the volume of distance flooded my legs with lead. As I had to run on the thin shoulder of a bustling highway to reach the next climb I wanted to cover. Each car whizzing past shuttered the sorrow I didn’t want to swim through all day. Each mile made it harder to think about anything but the number of miles before and after me.

What a gift it was that running was allowing me to choose my pain that day, I thought, as I crested another grinding hill and felt the ascending earth storm my legs with heaviness. It was such a relief to feel physical fatigue overcome my body and my mind and save me from 1,440 straight minutes of taunting grief. I thought about my mom pedaling through her 65th mile on that August day, I was too tired to do anything but grin at the memory of her.

By the time I stumbled through the final steps of the run, the sun was plunging into the foothills and my boyfriend was lighting a fire in our backyard, so a few friends could spend my birthday eve drinking a few beers around a crackling fire pit.

As I settled into a seat by the warm fire, I felt my pummeled legs collapse into the soft camp chair that cradled me. My tired body released a deep breath of the physical and emotional stress that had been mounting for hours. For weeks. For months.

The promise of actually enduring the day glowed alongside the burning embers. I exhaled the relief of knowing I was going to get through it.

The 36 mile tour of Eugene’s hills had served its purpose: it gave me a purpose other than wading through grief from dawn to dusk. It allowed me to take care of myself in a way that my mother would love. It let me avoid spending the entire day haunted by her absence, while letting my memories of her guide me to the traihead that gave me 36 miles of peace. Her fierce motherly love there every step of the way.

This holiday season is going to be brimming with grief and loss for just about everyone in this pandemic-swept country. Whether that’s loss of loved ones or loss of time together or loss of traditions with friends. There’s a spider web of layers on layers on layers of loss and pain and grief stretched from the foamy tides of the Pacific to the sandy shores of the Atlantic.

Loss will certainly hang heavy over this holiday season for my family. Tomorrow will be another day when red-hot grief wakes up beside me. I will probably not cover another 36 miles on foot, but I will definitely find a way to give myself relief from the crushing pain on another extra hard day. Maybe with an extra-long, extra-steamy shower with Taylor Swift’s Red album blaring in the background. Or an off-the-grid snowy playdate with Dilly Pickle Chip. Or another lead-pumping run up a grinding hill in the forests perched above Eugene.

I might climb until I flood my legs with fatigue, finding the relief I need from the pain of loss. The relief so many of us need right now.

And I’ll know that even as I find ways to take a break from the pain of just how much I miss my mom - I’m never abandoning the fierce love that I’m grieving. That love is why I’m out there, finding ways to get through another step, another extra hard day, another milestone. That love is why we find ways to keep going.