I made a friend on the way to the New York Marathon on November 7th. He, John, and I started talking while we waited to board the buses that took us to Staten Island and did not stop until we disembarked an hour later and both ran to wait in separate bathroom lines. I liked him.

What I love most about running marathons is the people I encounter while running. This was my seventh marathon and by far the most inspirational. About seven miles into the race, I started catching up with the disabled runners who started earlier than the rest of us (the last runner finished over 29 hours after the start of the race and was escorted by Hell’s Angels as she ran through the night). There were wheelchair athletes, blind runners tethered to volunteers, and individuals with muscular dystrophy. A man with a prosthetic leg passed me around mile 13. His stride was smooth and graceful. It was amazing for me to think we were all running the same race. Each of us had a story, a challenge, and a reason for running. The energy of both the runners and the spectators was truly awesome. I would run it again tomorrow if given the chance.

The race started just after 10 AM on Staten Island. We (all 30,000 of us) crossed the starting line with Frank Sinatra’s voice encouraging us to “start spreading the news…” The skies were bright blue as we watched our footing on the Verrazano Bridge and the tug boats in the harbor blast colored water from their decks. The tugs were sounding their deep horns in our honor. What a wonderful experience to remind me of why I love running, why I love running large marathons.

My sister and brother were on the course to cheer me as I ran past. The first half of the marathon was wonderful. I was running well and was able to enjoy the spectators and scenery until mile 15 when my hamstrings tightened and began to pull as they had done in every long training run I had run months prior to the race. Sitting at my desk working for long hours had aggravated them. There was not much that I could do, except keep putting one foot in front of the other to finish the race. The second half of a marathon is usually about mind over body. For me that day, the end of the race was about body over mind over body, especially after I started wheezing around mile 21. Even though I can count on both hands the number of times I have had to use an asthma inhaler, I should have brought one that day, since marathons often trigger asthma for me. I ran those last few miles slower with every step; however, I finished and managed to succeed at accomplishing my primary goal: to have fun. There will be other marathons where I will be able to attempt a personal record. The 2004 New York Marathon was about running again after having to scratch the 2003 New York Marathon and the 2004 Boston Marathon due to injuries. It was about finding myself in the middle of a sea of runners. It was about running and loving running even when my body felt awful and I wondered if I would ever reach the finish line. It marked a triumph of spirit.

Today is Dad’s birthday. He would have been 63. Although I have thought about him a lot since he died on July 21^st, I really missed him today. I suppose some of the horror that I witnessed this summer is fading. I am starting to think of him as the Dad I knew before his last series of hospitalizations, before he lost his quality of life. All day I have been visualizing calling him. He was a man of few words on the phone. I have pictured him pausing to answer the phone as he walked! out the door. He was not agile, but he was active when he was feeling well.

It is amazing how the mind works. It puzzles me that I have been thinking about Dad as he was in his early 50s, instead of the state that he was in when he died at age 62. I suppose there is no use dwelling on the fact that he had lost virtually all his quality of life at the end, including his ability to sit, stand, and walk. As I discussed in so many of the entries that I wrote last summer, dying was a process for Dad. Why not remember him when he was alive, really alive?

I felt his presence again as I was climbing into bed at the close of his birthday. I made a mental note that he was wearing an Oxford shirt and then went to sleep. My family members and I have been talking about the presence of spirits, particularly Dad’s spirit. At various points in time, most of us have sensed his presence. Earlier in the fall, two people my sister was meeting for the first time several weeks apart remarked about the spirit they saw standing at her left side. One asked whether Margaret had lost a member of her parent’s generation. Neither of the individuals knew about Dad’s death.

Most people don’t believe in spirits. I believe the idea opens our minds to an alternative way of viewing death. The idea both fascinates and puzzles me. I am presently trying to figure out how the Christian, Buddhist, and animistic views of life after death mesh. How long does it take for spirits to be reborn into new lives? Why do some spirits linger? How are some Buddhist lamas able to identify their next lives? How is it possible that so many different cultures and religions have similar views about death? I have many questions.

There have been several light moments that have occurred over the course of the past week that I would like to record here.

Last Monday evening I ‘sat’ with a Zen Buddhist group. About 30 minutes into the hour meditation session, a bell tower nearby tolled and subsequently played “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” As it was playing, I was reminded of the song that I heard the last time I sat with the group: The Addams Family theme song. The challenge of meditation is to focus on the moment – one’s breathing, the surrounding noises, the sensation of sitting on the meditation cushion – and in doing so reel in the mind from fantasizing about the future or delving into the past. The mere absurdity of the mixture of East and West made me smile.

Last Friday evening on my way from Ithaca to Baltimore, I stopped in a remote area of Pennsylvania to get gas and something to eat. As I wandered into a local grocery store on a rural stretch of road, I wondered if I would be able to find hummus. I met one blank stare after another as I asked employees if the store carried the product. One kind young man asked the manager and escorted me to a refrigerated island display case. On the way there, he said: “Ma’am, I was going to get it for you, but when I got there I found 18 different varieties and didn’t know what you wanted.” We both smiled. Who knew this small grocery store in rural Pennsylvania would have as many options as one of the big chains found in a larger city?

On Wednesday I went aqua jogging in a campus pool and felt as if I had landed in the middle of an old-fashioned video game where I was the obstacle the video game player, the swimmer, had to get around in order to score mega points. At one point, I found myself sharing a lane with as many as three swimmers. The experience reminded me of swimming in Nepal when I swam laps in a pool that was used to teach novice Nepali swimmers to propel themselves across the width of the pool. Their torpedo-like glide turned into a float before their bodies sank and they were forced to stand about half-way across. I chose to swim with my head above water, so I could see them coming. It never ceased to amaze me that it was possible for all of us swimmers to coexist, even as many as eight at one time. Despite the chaos, it was possible to find a rhythm and create some magic. Isn’t order created from chaos?