My Aunt Corinne was someone who stayed in touch with dozens of people. She had 18 nieces and nephews and a similar number of grand nieces and nephews. She had three lifelong friends and approximately 10 good buddies from the various groups she participated in. She sent birthday, holiday, and thank you cards to all of them. Her photo albums were filled with meticulous notes—names, dates, and locations. She was serious about keeping up with people.
Yet when my siblings and I were planning her funeral, we were thwarted in our efforts to notify her friends and in-laws. We didn’t have her address book, and we didn’t know the last names of some of the key people in her life. Uncle Bob, her husband, had been dead for 15 years. We’d never met his relatives.
The breakdown in communication occurred over the course of several years.
Her address book got lost when she moved from her assisted living apartment into a nursing home. My siblings and I didn’t know it was gone or even think to ask about it. We assumed she kept in touch with the people who mattered to her.
The problem was compounded when the apartment management couldn’t or wouldn’t tell Aunt Corinne’s in-laws and the nieces and nephews from that side of the family what nursing home she had gone to.
Aunt Corinne lost the drive to manage the details of her life.
She was still lucid, but her world had shrunk to a bed in the room she shared with another nursing home resident. She simply didn’t have the emotional energy and mental focus to reach out to family and friends or to ask us to do it for her. We wondered why she didn’t have more visitors and why more of her many nieces and nephews didn’t get involved with her care. But we didn’t want to be judgmental or make her feel bad by asking, so we shrugged off our questions.
Someone at the church Aunt Corinne attended heard about her death and told her circle of friends, so half a dozen of them came. Eventually we tracked down the names of Aunt Corinne’s in-laws and they spread the word. A few more friends and former coworkers read about her funeral in the newspaper. We were relieved that nearly 30 people were on hand to remember this special lady who always made a point of remembering them.
Losing touch is easier (and therefore, more troubling) than I ever thought possible.
When I consider the many ways I stay in contact with friends and family members—phone calls, texting, emailing, social media, Skype, snail mail—it seems astonishing that anyone could drop off the radar. Most people associate accidentally losing contact and being unable to find friends and family as the sort of dilemma that could only happen to refugees who are separated because of war or a natural disaster. But Aunt Corinne lost many of her connections because of a series of small mishaps and unasked questions.
Well-intentioned people lose touch even when they’re trying. It isn’t that hard.
This past October, my 92-year-old mother and my Aunt Corinne, her 88-year-old sister, both needed to be moved. Mom was moving from the house in Ohio where she’d lived for more than 30 years to a seniors’ apartment. After breaking several vertebrae, Aunt Corinne has been in a rehab center for months. It’s unlikely she’ll be able to return to her costly assisted living apartment, so her belongings had to be packed up and put in storage.
Each move involved some emotional upheaval. And there was the usual packing process—coordinating with the movers, wrapping precious items in bubble wrap, and figuring out what to do with quasi-useful stuff (Is this worth keeping? Will she ever use this again?).
Since both moves had to happen within a week of each other, my siblings and I divided up the work. I organized Mom’s move from her house while my sister and brothers emptied out Aunt Corinne’s apartment.
We’re hardly unique. Many middle-aged people are called on to help elders, often while still raising children. We feel the pull of threads woven when we were still children—unaware of how we mattered to our family.
When my siblings and I were kids, Aunt Corinne and Uncle Bob were fun to visit. He owned a vending machine business, and they always gave my sister, two brothers and me candy, pop, and snacks from the supplies stored in the basement. Although they didn’t have children, they knew what kids liked, and they always remembered our birthdays with nice gifts. Thank goodness they had a poodle to play with, because we quickly grew bored and squirmy when the grownups talked in the living room. Aunt Corinne had a beautiful flower garden but never fussed if the ball or the dog got into it. So when poor health got the best of Aunt Corinne, we stepped in to help.
Similarly, my husband, his sisters, and brother began helping their uncle manage his affairs this year. He is fiercely independent, never married, generous to a fault, and blind since he was 40. He finally agreed to move into a nursing home after his last fall and hospital stay. At 92, he has Parkinson’s, cancer and a failing memory—too many issues for him to continue going it alone. When my husband was a teen, his uncle gave him a job in the cafeteria he managed. Since they have that history, he was better able to accept my husband’s suggestion that living alone was no longer a good idea.
From the vantage point of middle age, I can now see how we weave each generation into the sturdy cloth we call family.
A nephew on my husband’s side of the family recently got married. He’s a chef, so preparing wonderful food for the wedding was his gift to the guests. Unfortunately, at the last minute, some of the people he had counted on to help weren’t able to come. So his parents, grandmother, my husband and I, along with a handful of others, helped him and his fiancée pull together the many details of the wedding. We cooked, washed up, ran errands, and made decorations. The main entrée was a whole pig that needed to roast all night and most of the day. Our sons agreed to monitor the roasting pig during the middle of the night. That way, their cousin was able to grab a few hours of sleep the night before he got married. His parents rested easier, too.
Through their willingness to help, our sons deepened their relationships with their aunt, uncle, cousin and his bride. John and I reinforced our ties with our nephew and new niece.
But more than that, our help affirmed how families pay it forward . . . and back. Giving and receiving are the warp and weft that create the enduring fabric of family.
What am I doing? I asked myself at 4 a.m. Saturday morning.
Often I find myself asking this question—whether it’s getting bitten by a police dog, jumping off a cliff, or sparring a 20-something man.
Why do we do what we do?
I would have 13.1 miles to ponder this question, if I followed through on running Grandma’s Half Marathon.
It wasn’t that I haven’t run a half marathon before. I have, many of them. I’ve also run many full marathons—the entire 26.2 miles—Twin Cities, Grandma’s, Chicago, Big Sur, Whistlestop, etc… Some of them, I’ve run more than twice.
Most likely, I asked myself, What am I doing? then too.
Gun has gone off. Moving towards the start.
Saturday morning, it was drizzling. If it was a downpour, I wouldn’t have left our tent trailer where Antonio, Crystel and the dogs were sleeping—warm and dry.
There were times that I haven’t made it to the start line. On one occasion, I had a broken toe. Others, maybe I wasn’t prepared for the venture.
Today my only reason would be that it was a little wet. That wasn’t enough to keep JODY out of the half marathon so I didn’t even bring it up. I knew that I would feel bad if the weather cleared and the sunrise took care of the haze and most importantly, JODY would be out there running the race and not Beth.
Why We Do What We Do, Reason #1: We are partnered with a person who follows through when we might quit if left on our own.
I’ll admit right now that Jody is a better person than me and a much better athlete. With that thought, I just got into the van for the ride from the KOA in Cloquet to the Duluth Convention Center where we would board a bus and be taken to the start of the half marathon.
Discarded clothing and trash bags. I kept mine for the first mile.
Generally, if I am able to get myself to a race, I can finish it. Even if I fall down in the first few miles like I did during a rollerblading marathon. I picked myself up, swatted at the road rash and kept going. I still have the scars.
There are events when wearing a trash bag is perfectly good attire, even envied. Saturday morning was one of those times. It didn’t appear that the drizzly weather was going to quit.
I had a strategy for the half marathon. I was going to run walk it. So the fact that I hadn’t run walked more than 7 miles to get ready for the half didn’t bother me.
Reason #2: To see if we can actually do something that we aren’t prepared to do.
I thought that I could run 10 minutes, walk five minutes and in that manner I would stay in front of the bus that would pick you up if you were too slow. It clearly stated the time requirement in the rules: A policy regarding time requirements will be implemented for the half marathon. The policy requires participants to maintain a 14-minute-per-mile pace (finish in 3:03:40). Those unable to maintain this pace along the course will be bused back to the DECC parking lot. Failure to comply with this time policy will result in immediate disqualification.
My new goal. To keep her in my sights.
I’ve been threatened before with a mandatory bus pickup, but it hadn’t happened … yet. Now is the moment to tell you that I did run a marathon with my adult niece who was in the portapotty when they were coming to clear the course. I had to stop them from loading her and the potty onto the semi bed. She should be forever grateful to me.
When the race crowd surged forward, Jody and I knew the run had started. We moved with the wave and soon Jody was saying her goodbyes.
I altered my running strategy to run the first 3 miles and not walk any of it, because I knew that I could run that far without stopping and in that way gain minutes on the bus. You might think I am jesting here, but my goal was to finish the half marathon in 3:00:00 hours. That only gave me a 3 minute and 40 second leeway or I’d be forcefully placed on the bus. Being in front of busses, trash haulers, and portapoppy picker uppers has been a lifelong goal of mine.
The crowd I was with wasn’t moving too fast. That is the funny thing about these races. You wear a chip on your shoe and it tells you everything. For instance, I know that after the race started (gun time) that it took me 5 minutes and 52 seconds to cross the starting line.
Lemon Drop Hill
This posed a problem for me. I only had a 3 minute and 40 second leeway before I would be picked up by the bus. Does a bus pickup go by the gun start or the chip start? Most runners don’t think of these things, but I pondered that question for the first few miles.
Fortunately, about the 4th mile, when I started slowing down I saw a woman runner holding a placard that said 2:45. Whoa. If I could hang with her and her group, then I would do better than I thought.
Reason #3: Sometimes we surpass our own expectations.
I was pleased to find like-minded people to run near. They ran and walked. So now, my new goal was to stay right with them and not lose sight of that woman with the sign.
Music urging us onward.
I was around the 10-mile mark when Jody finished the half marathon. I know this because she finished at 1:54 minutes and at the 10-mile mark my chip time said 2:03:21. I had 3 more miles to run.
It is one of those things about our relationship that I have accepted. I had just started feeling my groove and was in the zone, but she was toweling off, wearing the finisher’s jersey, and fiddling with her medal.
It was there at the 10-mile mark that I left those 2:45ers behind and started running my own race.
Reason #4: We constantly push ourselves to make living worth living, to feel alive.
The last three miles of the race were my fastest times with the last mile of the half marathon being the quickest at 11:03 minute a mile.
In the zone you feel like you are flying and your feet have wings. I gave it everything I had and passed 220 runners in the next 34 minutes (this stat provided by your chip).
Finishers!
Reason #5: It makes us feel good, young, and healthy.
After the race, Jody said that she thought her full marathon running days were over.
“Oh, no,” I said. “When we’re really, really old there won’t be that many people in our age group.”
In our 50 – 54 age group, there were only 217 females running the half marathon out of 6,627 people. Just think how that number will drop when we are 65 years old. Now that’s the time to run a marathon.
Reason #6: Against all odds, against all stats, against all reason, we might win. Never give up.
Beth’s Stats: Jody’s Stats:
Average Pace 12:04 per mile Average Pace 8:46 per mile
Overall Place 5881 out of 6627 Overall Place 1927 out of 6627
Sex Place 3336 out of 3904 Females Sex Place 725 out of 3904 Females
Yet when my siblings and I were planning her funeral, we were thwarted in our efforts to notify her friends and in-laws. We didn’t have her address book, and we didn’t know the last names of some of the key people in her life. Uncle Bob, her husband, had been dead for 15 years. We’d never met his relatives.
