Signs of Life (37 page)

I secretly thought that because this was Josh’s bike, I would jump on and glide through the course. I would fly through the course because Josh’s spirit would somehow come alive once I started riding. I really didn’t need to train all that hard because the bike would do the work for me. Something magical would happen when this bike and I met the pavement of a real race. We would somehow join forces and suddenly it would be Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on two wheels. I would fly past people. “Whoa!” spectators would yell. “Who
was
that girl?” And miraculously, I would have one of the fastest bike times of the entire triathlon. A picture of me passing elite male riders would appear in the
Washington Post
beneath the headline
WIDOW FINDS HOPE ON HUSBAND’S BIKE
. The mayor of Washington, Adrian Fenty, an elite rider himself, wants to meet me. The bike and I are national heroes.

It takes me about thirty seconds to realize that my Chitty Chitty Bang Bang daydream is not coming into fruition. After a very clumsy mount and clip in, it dawns on me that the only force getting me through the next forty kilometers are my skinny legs. And I don’t mean skinny in a good way. I look down at my bike computer about every four minutes. I have roughly an hour and a half on this thing. My butt hurts already.

I pass three people who are fixing flats. Somehow I convince myself that those three people are enough of a sacrifice to the gods, and I won’t have a problem. It’s like when Eurylochus from Homer’s
Odyssey
sacrifices the cattle to make Helios the Sun God happy.

I’ve never biked for an hour and a half without stopping. I’ve never done four consecutive hours of physical activity. But the hardest part about this triathlon is that it’s just me. Nobody is
there to coach me or run next to me. All my life, I have played a team sport. In soccer, no matter how tired or frustrated I got, there were always at least twenty other players around me to help me out of my mental block. If I got tired or hurt, my coach could pull me. I would sit down, drink some water, talk to my teammates, think about my mistakes, then go back out. Endurance events are very different. At the start of the race, the door shuts in your own head, and it’s you versus you for four hours. So I start to retreat into my own head for a while and see what’s there. Somewhere around mile eighteen on the bike ride through beautiful Maryland, I think to myself,
I am better off today, September 14 of this year, than I was on September 14 of last year
. I stop there. This time I don’t think about the years before or the years to come. I just absorb the scenery and try to take in the moment. I feel like a weight has been lifted. Sometimes I feel great victory in single moments. Maybe Sartre’s free will isn’t a big joke after all.

One hour and thirty-three minutes later, I come into my second transition. There are a lot of things to remember to do in about two minutes. I curse myself for not listening to Coach Rick. Despite my fumbling around, one single happy thought surges through my body: The bike course is over and I can’t wait to put on my running shoes. I rip off my helmet, get my bike on the rack, and give it a little “Thanks for nothing” under my breath. I try not to mentally assess how heavy my legs feel. I get my running shoes on and take off for round three.

I feel amazing. No more fear of a flat tire, no more wincing at the thought of swallowing water from the Potomac. No more staying afloat. I’ve made it to the run. This is what I know how to do.

I see three girls from my Team in Training team up ahead. They are all about my age. They met one another through TNT
and they all attended a significant number of training sessions. They are all really strong cyclists. I start to pick up my pace to catch up with them. I bet they waited for one another after the bike so they could run together. I have no intention of running with them. Something comes over me, and all I want to do is pass them.

I have 6.2 miles ahead of me. It is probably somewhere around 11 a.m. Today is forecasted to be one of the hottest days in September. We are definitely in the upper eighties right now, and it is supposed to get to ninety-two degrees by noon. I remember someone saying earlier that there is no shade on the run portion of the course. I acknowledge all of these factors, and then I dismiss them. I start passing people who smoked me on the bike. Until this moment, I forgot what it feels like to compete. Suddenly, all I want to do is beat people. I know this is all for a really good charity, and it’s not about who beats whom. But as any true athlete will tell you, that is the biggest lie anyone has ever uttered. All my life, I have been a competitor. I wholeheartedly admit that I love the feeling of victory, and I despise the feeling of defeat. Sure, that may be immature or arrogant, but if my hockey-playing dad and trash-talking brother have taught me anything in life, it is that no matter what people tell you, no matter what charity you banner across your chest, it is
always
about who wins and who loses. I start to speed up.

I catch the group of girls. They seem to be chatting. “Good job, Natalie!” one of them yells, with a really polite wave. “Thanks! Keep it up, ladies!” I yell back. But deep down, I really don’t mean it.

I forgot this part of me existed. I haven’t played soccer in over two years. I haven’t had the time or energy or do anything physical since I got pregnant with Kai, which feels like a lifetime ago. After Josh died and after Kai was born, I always looked
at my athletic days as someone I was. Now I jog, go for walks, or do aerobic videos in my basement. I’m a mom, I always reasoned. I don’t need to be physically fit anymore. So what if I’m a little chubbier than when I was in college. What woman isn’t? I don’t care what I look like anyway. I’m not trying to impress anyone.

But running through Washington, D.C., I can feel the sweat rolling down my face. I have to use my tank top to wipe off my forehead about every five minutes so it doesn’t get in my eyes. I find people up ahead to pass and go after them. I thought this part of me was dead. I am so happy to know it isn’t. I guess it was just dormant. And dormant and dead are two very different things.

I just keep running. I don’t think about mile markers or pace or feeling tired. I am smiling as I run.

There is about a half mile left. I turn a corner and I can see the Capitol Building in the distance. For some reason, the pavement feels different. I am running on blacktop instead of normal concrete. I think my endorphins are wearing off. I start to feel like I’m going to pass out or maybe fall forward. Finally, with about four hundred meters to go, I see Moo. She has finished and she’s waiting for me. She sees me and starts jumping up and down and yelling.

“Come on, Nat! You can do it, Nat!” She’s been doing a quieter version of cheerleading for the last fourteen months, but seeing her here yelling for me is enough to remind me that this isn’t impossible. And by “this” I mean a lot more than the last four hundred meters, but right now that’s all I can think about. What am I so afraid of? I’m not going to pass out or fall over. I keep running.

After I cross the finish line, I go have a few minutes to myself. I hope Moo doesn’t find me right now. I don’t think I can
even talk. I feel horrible. I desperately need water, and I also suddenly really have to go to the bathroom. I sit in the shade for about ten minutes. I can hardly think in a straight line.

Finally, after sitting in the shade by myself, I find Moo. She is screaming, jumping as she runs at me, and before we can even exchange words, she hugs me. Someone takes a picture of us right at the moment when we see each other for the first time after the race. I don’t know who it was, but it is the best picture you have ever seen. Moo’s head is buried in my neck, the way Kai hugs me when he’s tired. You can see my face. My mouth is open and smiling. I think I’m yelling. It’s one of those pictures where we really didn’t know we were being photographed, so you get to see how we really felt right at that moment. We are both overjoyed.

I remember how much I hated when people would take pictures of me after Josh died. I hated trying to smile. One of the worst feelings is knowing you have to force yourself to smile. But when this picture is snapped, I am smiling. It’s not a fake smile either. It’s the real thing.

In act 1, scene 5, of
No Exit
, Inez Regault says, “One always dies too soon—or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are—your life, and nothing else.” Up until this very moment when I hug Moo, the last year and two months of my life have not been my proudest moments. I’ve spent much of my time crying in a bathrobe and wishing for a life I didn’t have. I have been ungrateful for my family and too hard on my in-laws. I have been made tired by my son instead of allowing him to breathe a new life into mine. But right here, right here with my sister, I feel like I’ve reclaimed something. I don’t know what it is, but I know I just finished something. I finished a race. There was a start and a finish and I crossed the line, and now I
get to be happy. Nothing else in life works this way. Nothing else has such clear-cut indications of beginning and end, so I’m going to savor the moment. You can take this moment and hang it up. This can be my life. A big challenge, a long course, a really, really tired body, but ultimately, I finish what I set out to do. The best part is, my sister is hugging me. Her arms are fully flexed as she hugs me. We know this is not just about a triathlon. This is about moving from one place to another. Maybe not far, or fast, but we are moving. A year ago, we were in the same pose, her holding on to me like I was leaving for the moon, but our facial expressions were completely different.

In all of the pictures that people have taken of me in the last year, I have a very mediocre smile. In my friends’ wedding pictures, I am smiling, but it’s nothing like the one of me after the triathlon. Sure, maybe it was the endorphins or the pride I felt from having finished. I don’t care what it was. It is proof, real proof, that I am in a place that can produce that smile. When I used to go to Dr. G., I remember telling her all the time about how I was scared that I would always feel sad and depressed. Even though people told me that over time things would change, I never believed them. I really thought I would wake up every morning with a knot in my stomach, and all the things I used to enjoy—food, time with my family, reading a good book—wouldn’t bring me joy anymore. For a long time nothing brought me joy. Over and over, Dr. G. would assure me that it would pass. “You are only visiting this place.”
Visiting
. That was her word. When I look at this picture, I finally believe her.

right
before Kai was born, one of my mom’s friends, Abbey, wrote me a letter. When Abbey’s son, Zach, was eighteen months, he died tragically after falling into a river. The family was crushed. Over time, Abbey and her husband decided to have another child. Cale was born a few months after the one-year anniversary of Zach’s death. Initially when I got her letter, I thought it was going to be about coping with loss, but it wasn’t. She wrote to tell me about the day Cale was born. In the letter she said she remembers it as a time when “the colors were real again.”

Today is October 18, Kai’s first birthday, and all I can see are colors. Kai wears a red ribbon on his jacket that says
MY SPECIAL DAY
. It flitters on his chest like a hummingbird as he runs across the playground. His jacket is full of yellows and blues. All of our decorations are bold primaries. Not to mention the park itself. The leaves are turning, every tree has its own palette of autumn. Kai’s bright blond hair looks beautiful in the October sunshine. It reminds me of his dad.

A few months ago, I know I looked at that blond hair and thought about how I have to live without Josh, and nothing was more depressing and painful than comprehending life without my husband. But now, standing here at Kai’s first birthday, I look at that hair and think about how I get to live with our amazing son. At some point in the last few months, things that used to feel like a weight or a burden are starting to feel more like an opportunity. We get a chance to celebrate.

Abbey’s letter says, “Natalie, the pureness of every emotion with a baby is so uplifting, love-soaked, and healing. They make real laughter bubble from your soul.” When I see Kai run up to hug his great-grandpa or laugh as Deedee pushes him in the swing, I think about Abbey’s words. Kai has brought all of us back to life.

Josh isn’t here. I’ve spent the last sixteen months trying to get my head around that, but I’ve reached a place where I can say that grief is not about recovery or resolution or being fully healed. It’s about living without someone, but still embracing life. It’s about understanding that time is not as linear as we thought, but perhaps it’s more like laying pictures one on top of another. It’s about holding our Zachs and our Cales and our Joshes and our Kais together in one space and somehow feeling the presence of all of them.

Today I know that Josh is close enough to tell me not to be sad. I get to see all of the things that he has to miss. My dad holds Kai as they flip burgers together. My mom chats with all of the guests, both children and adults. Auntie Moo flew in from Florida for the birthday. She runs around the park with Auntie Ash and Auntie Hales taking pictures and passing out cake. Everyone is there to sing. Mr. Battersby, Katie, Mathews, Maggie, Terrah—all of our friends and family. And I am here to see all of these faces and sing “Happy Birthday” to my one-year-old
son. How could anything else on the entire planet matter more than singing “Happy Birthday”?

So, yes, the colors are real again. The colors are coming back. And somehow, ever so slowly, the same has happened to me. With the help of my friends and family, my students and my school, my books and beloved authors, with the help of other people’s stories of pain and triumph, and of course, with the help of my son, I can finally say that I am coming back. They have all brought me back.