I ran a 5k today, my first. I didn’t really run. I completed it in 39 minutes which is barely a jogging pace, but I jogged the entire time, stopping only once to linger in shade. It was 84 degrees at start time, quite reminiscent of the day in 2007 that Kevin ran his first and only marathon. That day was so hot a few of the runners crossed the finish line on stretchers, one was intubated. Kevin was suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion. He had a look on his face that was different from anything I had ever seen. But I would see it again when, a year and a half later, after surgery to his spine, he developed a hematoma and wasn’t getting enough air to his lungs or his brain. That run precluded his cancer by only a few months and he came to think that the extreme training regimen he endured could have had some causality.

I have never liked running. Honestly, I still don’t. I’ll run a few times a week and improve my pace, maybe shoot for a longer run someday, but I don’t think I’ll ever get the “runners high” that Kevin loved so much. I am a social person who loves group exercise like aerobics and Zumba or group bike rides. Kevin was more solitary than most people realized and he loved individual pursuits. He also loved a challenge, especially one that he gave himself. So running to him was a personal challenge to be better than he thought he was, or better than others thought he could be. I understand now, more so than I ever did before, how one can be caught up in the self- imposed challenge. I have dared myself multiple times in the past five years to move forward, try something new, do something I never thought I could. The decision to run a 5k (and I should say, I did it as part of a social group) was just another in a line of tests I’ve given myself.

Rising to those challenges has changed me in many ways. And I am constantly dealing with that change. I can’t help but feel sometimes an almost overwhelming sense of betrayal for all that I’ve started and accomplished in the past five years (and thanks to my dear friend Dania for helping me put a name to this strange feeling). If Kevin were here right now, he would barely recognize this person I’ve become: a teacher, a writer, a Detroiter, and hardest sometimes to reconcile, a happy person.

As I trained for the 5k--running with a group of people I’d never met before and making new friends as we moved along the Dequindre Cut Greenway, one of my favorite spots in Detroit--I very often thought about Kevin and his love of running. As I've mentioned, it was something that we didn’t share and there were times when I would be aggravated by his need to get up and run in the morning when the kids needed tending and we were all rushing to get out the door, or Saturday mornings when there was a long list of chores and he would go out for an hour to drive to the trail and run. It wasn’t until after he was gone that I fully understood how much he needed that time and that routine. His ADD made it difficult for him to stay on task and being able to tick something off each day before he even got in the shower was important and helped to get him focused for the rest of the day. Some of his ashes are spread along his favorite trail. I wish I had understood more thoroughly and been more generous.

As with many things around loss, I learn about Kevin and I learn about myself as I learn something new. I know that this challenge to run and complete a 5k was motivated in part by the feeling of betrayal or moving away. I know on some level I thought that maybe if I do something he would have  loved for me to do, I can be at peace. The first time this thought came to me, about two weeks into training, this Kenny Chesney/Dave Matthews song came up on my phone as I was completing my run.

Of course it never had before. It was part of  Kevin’s chemo playlist and was suggested to Kevin by another dear friend, Jenny, as he was compiling treatment music. I had purposely avoided loading any of Kevin's treatment music onto my phone because it's still very emotional, so I have no idea how it even got onto my playlist.

When the song came on after our run, I didn’t hang around the group to stretch, but went straight for my car and had a good cry.

Today, I purposely loaded Kevin’s running playlist onto my phone. I felt it fitting that he would be with me in this way; another challenge. I was running with him and for him and for all the running he was never able to do. I was running for me and our kids as we see a future and try our best to embrace it with all our hearts. I was running for forgiveness. More than anything else, I was running for forgiveness. 

 About five minutes into the run a goofy song came on that Kevin loved and I hated. I won’t even mention its name since it is really goofy and I’d have to tell the whole long story behind it. But of course I knew that he was laughing at me having to listen to this song, and telling me it was ok that I didn't love every single thing about him.

"Leave that burden right here, at this finish line, and don’t keep trying to make me happy. Make  yourself happy. Live your life."

I don't think I’ll ever grow to love running. But I’ll keep doing it. I'll keep running toward all that awaits me.

I don’t know what happens when we die. My thoughts exist somewhere between the unshakable belief in an afterlife/Heaven of many of my family and friends, and that held by Kevin that once our brains stop thinking and our hearts stop beating, nothing more happens.

The feelings are complicated and involve faith, cultural mores, and now, experience. Shortly after Kevin’s death, I posted on his Carepages blog that I had received many “signs” of his presence and I chose to believe in them because Kevin’s spirit and soul--when they were here on earth, manifested in his body-- were so strong that they couldn’t possibly just end. I still believe that. I believe that love, a fierce desire to go on living, and a fate that ends that life too early, all make for an active afterlife.

Since Kevin’s passing, I have been visited by many signs. They bring me comfort and hope, not only for Kevin, but because this entire experience is nothing if not a daily reminder of my own mortality.

The morning after Kevin passed away, someone poured me a cup of coffee, which I took out to our front porch. It’s a large space, that porch. Our builder had to revise his cost estimate after he realized how big it would end up being; it was really an outdoor room. I sat on the porch where our family ate most dinners from May to October, and stared out into a void. Quite soon, a hummingbird ducked under the roof of the porch and came to me. It hovered just above my knee, as though preparing to drink nectar from the red flower on my pajama bottoms. I smiled. We had many hummingbirds around the yard, and Kevin would sit and watch them for long minutes. They battled over territory and a spot at the many feeders that Kevin and our daughter kept filled through the summer. I now have a hummingbird tatooed on my ankle and you'll notice a hummingbird on this blog.

A friend later told me that Native Americans believe hummingbirds carry the soul of the deceased to the afterlife. I’m ok with that.

I’ve had owls hoot as I sat in our hot tub, but they only come and make noise on special dates: our anniversary, my birthday.

In the year after Kevin’s passing, I saw fourteen shooting stars. Fourteen. In twelve months’ time. Whenever I would sink into despair about things done or not done, things left unsaid, or silly arguments I now wish we hadn’t had, I would ask Kevin to let me know that he was ok, that we were ok. Almost without fail, a star would shoot across the night sky. It brought a flood of tears, along with a sense of comfort that nothing else could bring.

Once, a snowy owl, maybe two-feet tall, landed in the road just in front of my car. I hit the brakes, the owl didn’t flinch.

It took a great deal of strength for me to venture into the garden that Kevin and I had worked so hard to maintain. I finally headed out one day, maybe a month after his death, and began pulling weeds, the act becoming a release for much of my pent-up anger and sadness. I cried the entire time I sat among the vegetables and flowers. Soon I noticed a hawk circling above me. My first thought was that an animal carcass must be nearby. But the hawk never lighted anywhere; it just kept circling and circling in the sky above my head, floating on the currents. I began talking to Kevin, giving sound to the angry, depressing thoughts, the unanswerable questions. Realizing that I couldn’t wipe my tears with muddy gloves, I gave up and returned to the empty house.

As I walked into our bedroom, a feather lay on the floor next to our bed. I wondered if the cat had somehow gotten out and the rest of the bird was under the bed. But no, no other sign of any wildlife was in the room that day, just a large, brown feather that I still have in my bedroom.

There have been other signs, too:  things gone missing that turn up in odd places, rainbows, a note that had never come to light despite three moves suddenly appeared in a room that we were clearing out to paint, as though it had been lying on the floor in that room for the past twenty years; the re-appearance of an old, deleted text message that showed up on my phone as I was delivering my Master’s thesis reading.

Some signs I plan to never tell, but to keep just between Kevin and me. There have been fewer in recent months, which causes me to wonder whether I was seeing what I wanted to see in the throes of grief. Or perhaps there is a settling of the soul in some place after which contact with the living lessens. I must live with the fact that I just don’t know. I know the strength of our love, our partnership. I know the force of his determination, and the strength of his wish to never be forgotten. I believe those things will continue to manifest themselves in my life. I hope they do.  They do not solve the mystery but they do ease the pain.