A Personal Record but not a Personal Best
Running the best time of my life after my Dad’s suicide.
The 2017 TC ten mile was the second weekend in a row I’d had a good run and a good cry. Yom Kippur was just the weekend before and the first time I’d visited my Dad’s grave since the funeral. Turns out, I’m still not feeling better. So, when I said the race was a personal record, it was. 8 min miles consistently for 10 miles. But, when I say it was not a personal best I mean I was incredibly depressed and kind of hopeless.
Starting out I was already so in my head.
In addition to Yom Kippur that week I’d laid off half my team, slept about 3 hours and spent the rest of each night paralyzed with worry about how I’d keep the other half engaged because I was such a phony. Then at mile 5 System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” machine gunned on in my run mix and I just lost my sh*t completely at these lyrics:
“I don’t think you trust
In, my, self righteous suicide”
My father Marcus took his own life five months earlier. It’s complicated and sad. I took five days off of work and then went back at it, each day more challenging than the last. I did not have the words for what I thought or felt about it, and mostly I’d just not allow the feelings because I had too much sh*t to do. His death hadn’t been a total surprise although it was a total shock. The reason’s why are another story altogether.
At “self righteous” I broke down into ugly cry tears.
It was raining hard, which I was grateful for because no one could tell the difference between chubby raindrops and ugly cry tears. There was something he had left for me, about doing this to take care of us that I could never articulate until this moment. System of a Down nailed it for me. in a couple lines. Self righteous suicide, yes! I was angry.
I was a grown ass man who didn’t need to be taken care of, that cared more about his Father’s well being than his financial prowess. WTF? My kid’s have no grandfather, they don’t get to grow up with Marcus’ completely unique brand of dark and offensive humor or the resourceful weekend warrior building projects or the stories of the BCA days of Marc the Narc or the guy who hates sports but will pitch a bucket of balls at you for hours so you have better baseball tryouts or the chief asshole who without hesitation calls up and unleashes a fury of profanity laden hostility upon your anti-semitic varsity soccer coach after which you are immediately switched to a new Social Studies class and never even looked by the coach again.
System of a Down, I totally feel this act was self righteous.Whether that’s true or fair I’m not the judge. But at least I have a name for how I feel or that I at least finally felt something other than anxiety and depression. And I cried, hard, for a mile.
He was an angel that did almost everything for us.
He was so convinced he was worth more dead than alive. He had fought major illness twice before, fought back to start a business when no one else would hire him and fought everyday after that to keep it going. But he was black and white about a man’s place. So much so, that he ensured he had a real DNR directive in place. So when I heard the next line of “Chop Suey!”…
“I, cry, when angels deserve to die”
…I hated and struggled with my next thought. Maybe, he had nothing left to give. He was an angel that did almost everything for us and it was time. Here was a thought I really just couldn’t be allowed to have. But I did, and I was involuntarily breaking down at the time. With five miles more to go, I started looking ahead. Better yet, my uncle was waiting to cheer me on in 1 mile. I had work to do, I had to be composed and I wasn’t getting anywhere if I didn’t just do some f’ing work.
Just do the f’ing work.
I had a team that next week that needed a leader, and I had a lot to learn to be that person. Stop crying Ross, do the f’ing work. I had kids that needed parenting I hadn’t learned how to give. Do the f’ing work Ross. I had a whole life that needed me to be present in it. Get out of your head Ross and do the f’ing work.
That little mantra got me going again but it didn’t really heal anything. It was too dogmatic to be healthy. For the healing story see Art Therapy №6: Work Sets You Free. Still, I finished up that race. Under any other circumstances I would have been really proud of the best run of my life. I had forgotten way back when I signed up for the race in June, I’d customized my race bib to say “For Marcus.” It wasn’t a race for me. My best time went to him. It went to the mindfulness that total exhaustion can bring. I could see more clearly my own thoughts and feelings. My dad was the best at doing the work for other people. I just wish he could have gotten done that for himself.
