Brian Sightings

Dealing with loss often teaches us how to live more fully in times of spiritual peace. Since losing Brian Katie, Stacy and I often have chances to relate times when we feel Brian's presence or notice an effect of his short 24 years on this planet. We affectionately call these moments Brian Sightings.

When I am in a place of perfect natural beauty I pause and inhale and look around. When Gary and I went backpacking in the Rocky Mountain National Park in 2010 I walked into a lovely meadow with wild flowers and a little rabbit hopped by. I stopped and looked around as Gary kept walking enjoying the beat of my heart and the labored breathing under my backpack. The sky was blue and a gentle breeze was blowing. I thought of Brian who loved to backpack and then out of nowhere a fine mist sprinkled on my face and sparkled in the air. I laughed out loud! I was sure it was Brian splashing water on my hot face, red from the effort of hiking. I ran to catch up to Gary panting and crying a little.

My most recent Brian Sighting was not quite as profound, but still made me smile. I am retired now and do some writing for different curriculum projects in Math and Science. I often include a story problem with Brian or Stacy as the subject of the problem. They both completed original research and  I write about the hypotheses of their research when I can. This fall I wrote assessment items for Hawkes Learning Systems and wrote a simple story problem with Brian earning rates of pay at two jobs. The problem showed up on the Final Exam Review written by the Bay College Math Department! I only wrote it a couple of months ago!

The realization of the blessing of being open to these little nuances of the presence of souls who have touched my soul is not limited to those who are dead. I also have this experience for people who I used to work with or travel with. The connection with people is lovely. I am not a social butterfly, but when I find someone that I resonate with I find they often expand my way of seeing the world.

When Stacy was little she used to love watching American Tale. The song "Somewhere Out There" was sung on drives to Brian's hockey games or family vacations many times. Now that she is in Brazil, I sing that song to myself often.
Somewhere Out There

Researching Our Journey

I just was looking through Brian's Chemo Blog:

I found a post by me 5 years ago:

Post a Comment On: Brian's Health Update Page

Three Years Since 50th State

When we are stressed we are often anaerobic, holding our breath without knowing it until we get a bit of a reprieve and we exhale then inhale and take in the life giving oxygen. That is what I am experiencing now that I am looking ahead to my retirement. I want to keep moving and interacting and living life to the fullest, but I will insist on pausing to breath.

My friends are mostly younger than me and don't realize that they are moving in a frenzied pace as I did without giving themselves time to inhale. I love the life that I am blessed with, but I wish that I could step back and slow things down a bit. As a young adult I felt as though my mother, teachers, and other adults were always imploring me to hurry up. I felt like a lazy sloth that could not keep up with the pace of becoming an adult. I would drink coffee, Diet Coke, and Diet Mountain Dew to attempt to keep up with the pace of the life that I was living. With these aids I felt better equipped to teach, exercise, parent, house-keep and be the super-wife that would make everyone happy. Being a teacher I had the summers off, but between sports camps, manic vacations on our boat, and summer professional development opportunities I didn't feel that I had the luxury to stop.

As my children left the nest I felt the need to maintain that pace to avoid the emptiness that their independence afforded me. I filled the void with teaching and running. Setting goals for myself to run the 50 United States of America gave me a personal space to commit energy to. I felt selfish, but am wonderfully supported by Gary who still tolerates my frenzied calendar of races. It has been three years since I finished running  a marathon in all of the 50 states. I still am having a hard time ratcheting down to low gear.

In the last 5 years, I have become even more conscious of my health and the health of the planet. I also have been dealing with menopause. To tackle the weight gain and hot flashes I have made some significant health changes.

• Vegan: I have been lactose intolerant since I was pregnant with Stacy who is now 26. So modifying my diet to exclude all dairy except the most aged cheeses was pretty much part of my lifestyle. When Stacy became vegan, she taught me how significant our meat consumption was to the health of the planet. Since then I saw the Discovery Channel's Racing Extinction. They stated that for every person that changes to a vegetable based diet it is like taking 1,000 cars off of the road. This is due to methane production of livestock. 
• Reliv: This vitamin supplement has helped my recovery between races, stopped hot-flashes and reduces brain fog making it's way into my neural networks. 
• Training: I have reduced the number of miles that I run. I get up at least 3 days a week with the sun, or in the winter before the sun comes up, to run with Krista Maline. My weekly mileage ranges from 15-36 miles. I give myself more rest days. 
• Emotional Health: In life I have felt like a plodder trying to amp up my output

Reflecting on Reflections

Yesterday I posted one of Brian's blogs about him wrestling with Bertrand Russell on the nature of and the existence of God. I read and reread what he wrote contemplating the relevance of it with the journey that he had not taken nor could have even foreseen.

It was on my mind when my friend Jane called:

I have been planning on taking a road trip with my wonderful and amazing friend Jane. She is a huge inspiration to me helping to motivate me through the fear of the emotion of being vulnerable and sharing a deeper look into my life. We were planning on taking her 4-year old dog Rex who had been diagnosed with lymphoma to Florida for therapy.

He did not make it. Yesterday, on Brian's birthday she called me. Her heart had broken. Rexxie made it home from the hospital and was only home for a few minutes when he quit breathing. My empathy for her situation was not lost on her as she screamed and cursed at God for allowing such a pure and innocent creature to be taken from her. No being as perfect as him deserved death. She had planned on fixing him and letting him heal in the Florida sun next week. She blamed him, but also blamed herself: "I am an unfit mother. He was going to make it. Why didn't I just start CPR? His head went limp on my lap!"  Her raw emotion flowed over my soul as I tried to find words to console her, knowing that those words did not exist.
One conclusion that she drew was difficult for me to comprehend much less find a way to defend against. She felt that since God took the very best from her, and left her ex husband alive to enjoy his material things, that he was rewarding the wicked materialistic humans and punishing those of us who found mortal souls to love deeply. The argument against this sentiment that I brought up was that those people who find pleasure and satisfaction in the material world do not know that joy that a pure and deep love that cannot be quantified by money can bring. She said that that sucks because those people just keep doing what they do, driving their BMWs and Jaguars and buying their big houses, unhurt by losing the very dearest ones they know. She compared her feelings of loss to hell, and what else could God do to her that would be worse than this? I was speechless. I let her talk, hoping that knowing that I heard her and shared her grief that she will eventually find peace. She has more boys (that's what she calls her rescue dogs) at home and they need her.
As difficult as it was to hear her soul wrenching sobs and her lamentations to heaven, part of me wanted to join the chorus and add my verse to the painful litany. I don't believe that God gave me my lovely son just to take him away, but the little girl in me wants to say whenever I get something nice it always gets ruined. And listening to Jane pound her own chest cursing herself for not being a good mother, makes my blood run cold and I understand the guilt that I own. I also have this terror that I will lose Stacy, because of my inadequacy as a parent. This is a completely irrational fear as she is a competent, beautiful young woman who is realizing her dreams, but I still feel afraid that I will get another phone call that will end my life.

365 Days of Reflection

http://emailbri.blogspot.com/2006/11/my-wrestling-match-with-bertrand.html

Brian wrote about his wrestling match with philosopher Bertrand Russell I think I will let his words speak for themselves. Again this was BC, BC: Brian Charles, Before Cancer.

My life has been so blessed with two amazing children. As I retire and take advantage of the opportunity to reinvent myself I want to pledge to daily post some tidbit of wisdom inspired by love.

Ecology of My Soul

I have spent the last week in a arid desert climate. I met a young doctor of acupuncture on my flight Anchorage in June. I asked her what she would recommend for a woman going through men
to help in menopause. She said that in this transitional period of a woman's life she is drying up. Dry skin, hair and vagina, Ha, ha I know... not what I expected to hear (although I can't deny the manifestations of the physical being). She recommended avocados, water, flax seeds, chia, and soy. All of these find their way into my vegan lifestyle but it made me giggle to think that this doctor implied that menopause implied a drying up of my physical form.
When I found myself in the desert, in an environment that caused me to dehydrate with every breath, it made me more sympathetic to the arid environment that I had always avoided and squinted at when I was required to face it. Animals that are adapted to the dry environment are nocturnal to avoid the suns rays, too intense to be active during the day. As I am challenged by my menopausal consequences ( I hate to call them symptoms, because that implies a pathogenic origin and it is not a pathogen), I find a kinship with the desert creatures. The night used to offer sleep and regeneration of life giving energy, now I battle to sleep after the sun goes down, Restless legs, hot flashes and my brain refuses to turn off and allow the subconscious to take over, leading to mornings that I wake with the sunlight feeling unquenched but restless.
I saw some scorpions on the road close to the finish line yesterday at the Extraterrestrial Full Moon Midnight Marathon in Rachel, Nevada. Normally they would have creeped me out, but they managed to adapt to an arid environment and my crunchy dry menopausal soul respected their ability to crawl around in the desert with their little poison points at the end of their curved tails and find a way to survive. Speak softly and carry a big stick.
Wisdom of the Day: Eat Avocados!

Fifty States!

Ten years ago, 2004 on Labor Day I ran my first 5K. I had always run two or three miles for fitness a couple of days a week since my daughter Stacy was born in 1991. But the summer of 2004 I met some amazing geology teachers up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at a graduate class in mining. We blasted rocks, climbed rock piles and I ran every morning with some of the teachers. That Saturday there was a 10 mile race, the Canal run in Hancock that some of my new friends were going to run in. I noticed that while many of the runners were amazing athletes, fit with 6% body fat, many of them were like me middle age average folks fighting off those nagging few pounds. I thought maybe I could try and train for a 5K. A friend from the class coached me via email and by Labor Day I was ready to run. It took me 33 minutes to finish my first 5K. I was frustrated that I couldn’t keep up a 10 minute mile. I decided to try a half marathon and little did I realize I was hooked. The challenge of tweaking a race routine, experimenting with different distances, and meeting all sorts of people has kept me pushing and testing my personal limits for the last 10 years.

My journey since then has been a difficult one. Personal challenges: divorce, remarriage,  my son’s life against cancer, and relocating to the Upper Peninsula have kept me exhausted and pushed to my emotional limit. Running gave me a space in time that I could own and be present in. Every year I added races to my calendar. I met some runners from Tulsa that belonged to a club called the Marathon Maniacs. Some people say that my running helped me through those challenges. Perhaps, but it feels like the more life pushed me the more I pushed back. I’m not sure that that extra effort made things easier. I just felt the ownership of those accomplishments and when it seemed that life was pruning and clipping the things that I cared about the most, running was a space that I could own. Many people who have loved ones in harms way, whether it is due to deployment, hardship or medical battles, understand what it means to feel that fear, helplessness and loss of hope. Prayer is the one fortress to allow you hope, and running is the venue that my prayers are most pure.

My mission or objective is so simple, to run a marathon in all fifty states while my health and finances hold out. The beauty of that endeavor is that I have a platform to honor those who have meant so much to me. And I have shared this journey with some amazing people. My fabulously talented daughter Stacy has been with me through this story from the start. She was at the finish line of my first marathon, the Bayshore Marathon in Traverse City, Michigan and is coming with me this weekend to support me. We have battled together side by side, without her I would be lost out on some lonely road somewhere.

My second marathon and first trail marathon was shared with the man that I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with. At the time I was reeling from a divorce and trying to figure out what my new identity was. I was surprised when he met me at 5am at the Grand Island Ferry Dock to come support me on the trail. The Grand Island Trail Marathon in Munising, Michigan is still my favorite race and it is the only race that I have repeated. Three years later Gary proposed to me at the north beach of the same marathon.

My first out of state marathon was the Disney Marathon in 2006. It was the first time that I noticed the presence of the purple Team-N-Training folks. They had support out on the course that made me a bit jealous and annoyed, but towards the end of the race I noticed that many of their shirts were honoring loved ones who had lost their battle with Leukemia or Lymphoma. It moved me to tears out there running through Epcot. Little did I know that 6 days later I’d be admitting my beautiful and healthy 21 year old son to the hospital for symptoms that would be diagnosed as PCNS Lymphoma, a form of inoperable brain cancer.  Within three weeks I was being educated and supported by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society people as how to advocate for my son. Anyone supporting a loved one with any of these conditions can receive the same support at www.lls.org . In the next three years I continued to run marathons as we battled the dragon. Brian proposed to and married the love of his life, Katie. The cancer remitted then relapsed three times, more frequently each time. He demanded to maintain poise and grace throughout, blessing all of those people on his team and in his life. He insisted to live his life intentionally and to not let his existence be defined by the adversity in his life. The last time the cancer relapsed he was undergoing chemo. We lost him that fall. November is a difficult month and I find it fitting to conquer this journey in this month. His goal was a mission to fight social injustice in the world. As I run these races I bring his ashes with me and I spread his ashes in a body of water. He was a lover of the ocean and water. The Chattahoochee river will carry his ashes to the ocean this weekend.

Serving the global good, starts with these fifty states and in choosing the Soldiers Marathon I am looking forward to honoring those who have dedicated part or all of their lives to serve our nation. I am honoring a former student, Matt Weber who gave his life in Iraq. I will be wearing a bracelet in his memory. My two cousins Brian and Clark have dedicated their lives to serving in the Air Force. I will be honoring them by wearing pins that they sent me. I have had the honor to teach with other former service people. They now serve our nation’s youth as educators. I also want to dedicate this run to my students who have served or are currently serving in our military. I have had students in all branches of the military and have written letters of recommendation for many students that have been accepted into the Armed Forces Service Academies. I follow and am proud of their achievements.

In 2007 I ran the Green Bay Celcom Marathon and saw my first fifty state marathon shirt. From that point on I was calculating and looking at calendars to see how I could fit my races in.  That day at the finish line I met Nancy Krusic. When we first met our runs were more counseling sessions, sharing our trials and tribulations. She was there for me when I lost Brian. She and Janet are my first real running buddies. I had always cherished my alone time running, but found such a bond with these two ladies that my training runs were brought to a totally new place. Nancy and I have run many states together. She and her sisters have been brave enough to come some of my crazy adventures. My PR is thanks to Nancy. She called me on a Thursday one April day and wondered if I wanted to go to Dearborn to run the Martian Marathon with her. She knew that I would be crazy enough to say yes. That was a 4:41 race. My goal Saturday is to finish! I don’t know if the excitement of the finishing finish line might power me to a faster race or if it may wear me out. Either way, crawling or leaping I will do my best to cross that line!

In the running adventures I have met many other runners. It always seems uncanny that when I run a race with people at my pace, how many parallels our lives seem to hold. If I tried to name them all this would be a book. Cathy from Texas is one of those people. We met at the Go St. Louis marathon last spring and I asked her what was next on her calendar and she said that she was running the Wild Women Marathon in Washington in July. It was a very small new trail marathon that fielded 300 relay runners and marathoners. Out of nearly 8000 Marathon Maniacs she and I were the only two that had signed up for that race. We ran it together and talked the whole time about our lives. So many losses and joys and similarities, it was a great race.

I’ve shared many races with my friends from Tulsa. This year I had the chance to run the Bataan Memorial Death March. This is a life changing race, dedicated to soldiers and marched by soldiers from multi-national armed services. I marched with German, Canadian, Coastguard, Army, Navy and other service people whose badges I could not recognize. I saw more colors and versions of camouflage than I could have imagined. I ran with John one of our Tulsa friends. He is joining us this weekend. He has a way of finding the most marvelous and challenging race venues. Nancy and John both mentioned the Soldiers Marathon in the past. John’s son was stationed at Fort Benning and Nancy has been invited by military friends to run it before. When considering my running calendar this year I wanted a race that was meaningful and logistically easy for friends to travel to.
Lately when runners ask me how many miles I run per week it doesn’t take long to calculate. I run between 26.2 and 40 miles per week. In 2012-2013 there was a twelve month period when I ran 16 states. So I was either recovering or tapering between races. I have reached a physical milestone this last year as menopause has kicked in. Last winter I reached my pre-running weight. Before I started running I was 152 pounds. In training for my first marathon in 2005 I got down to 130 pounds and kept it off. So it was frustrating to be running so rigorously and gaining weight. The menopause upset my sleep patterns with the hot flashed and to maintain my work schedule and energy I was craving and eating high carbohydrate sugary foods. I’ve never had a sweet tooth, but to get the burst of energy before my after school run I would have a bag of popcorn. Nancy had suggested years before that I try a vitamin shake that she was taking, but at the time I felt confident in my vitamin regimen. In January of this year as I tipped the scales and was energy deprived, I was sharing my frustrations with a friend, Marco and he mentioned the same vitamin shake that Nancy had been taking for the last three years. Her times and health were improving while mine where getting worse. I decided to give Reliv a try. Marco suggested that I try the Soyesentials, Now and Innergize for starters. The first shake that I took lifted the brain fog that had permeated my experience and with a month my hot-flashes were one a day and within two months they were gone! I have lost 14 pounds and am not craving sweets. I have recently decided to choose a vegan lifestyle and am feeling stronger then I have felt in years. This was the best health decision that I made since starting to run. I wish that I had done it when Nancy first suggested it.

I am a sixth grade teacher. I spent the first 25 years of my career teaching higher grades. I’m enjoying working with the younger students and have a map of the United States posted on the wall. I have recent race numbers taped around it and have marked off the states that I finished. Last year one of my sixth graders told me that I had inspired him to try and play a golf tournament in each of the fifty states. I told him to enjoy every one of them. I think the last few years I have been rushing finishing, partly do to fears that as I age I might not be able to continue, and partly to save money. Doubles and consecutive weekend summer road trips save travel expenses. I have a friend, Houstotonic Paul, who is managing to run all 50 states in less than 4 hours, and another Cory who is trying to BQ (Boston Qualify) in all 50 states. Lichu Sloan has run the 50 states 3 times, and 7 continents twice. There is a couple from the U.P. who are running all 50 states in alphabetical order. Nancy has BQ’d twice in the last two years and is planning on running Boston. All of these accomplishments eclipse mine.

Many people have wished me well on my Grand Finale. This makes me fearful. I am not done after Saturday. As to my next mission or objective: I haven’t decided what to do next. I have a house project to finish with my dear Gary. He has been sacrificing his summers supporting and accompanying me on my marathons. I think I owe him at least one summer without a month long tri-state journey. I am really enjoying trail races. I just ran my first 50 K in Vermont with my friend Stephanie in honor of her 50^th birthday, so maybe a 50K in 50 states? I love Canada and would love to run a race in each province. Another option is to run the seven continents. Maybe I should do a race in each country in this hemisphere to start with? I feel like a kid in an candy shop. So may races, so little time. I want to be present this weekend, so that decision can wait.

Fort Benning, Georgia: here I come!!