Running to Not Forget

When I run, I go to Mountain View Cemetery. I love seeing how it changes, how it stays the same when the world around me is so precarious.

When I returned home last Saturday, my toddler announced, “Mommy, when I get bigger and older, I want to run through a cemetery.” I laughed.

Little does she know she’s been here many times as a baby. I wrote a poem about the experience of walking through here with her two years ago as the world was on edge, COVID “sweeping the world / like my father in a game of Risk.”

That military image feels devastatingly apt right now as I run past gravestones and think of Ukraine. All the suffering they have endured and are still enduring. All the lives and homes lost. All the loss. The horrific war crimes the Russian army has committed in Ukraine, particularly against women and children, has shaken me. One of the questions I keep circling back to: “Where does all that hurt go? What does a country like Ukraine do with all that grief/rage/trauma?” I don’t have answers.

I recently read an interview with Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska in Vogue. When asked what can ordinary citizens do to help Ukrainians, she says:

The main thing is not to get used to the war—not to turn it into statistics. Continue going to protests, continue to demand that your governments take action. 

I suppose running and praying through a cemetery is one way I don’t get used to the war. There is death all around me here, including death from war. I notice how young the men are in the numerous memorials throughout the cemetery, many of them younger than me.

But I also run through the cemetery because there are signs of life all around me too: from cherry blossom trees to blooming heather, from freshly cut flowers to surprising gravestone offerings like big, juicy oranges. I need these reminders lately.

Running into a New Decade

Last Sunday I got to see my city in a new way. I ran it. Along with about 40 000 other people, I took over downtown streets and bridges, was cheered on by perfect strangers and their cardboard signs, felt the city come together in a rare moment outside of hockey.

I did my first Vancouver Sun Run and I liked it. It also happened to be on my birthday, which marked the start of a new decade.

There are a number of reasons why I wanted to do the Sun Run, but the biggest one was to show to myself—particularly my younger self—that I could.

I did club track and field in my youth, specializing in sprint hurdles and field events. The longest I ever ran on the track (and it was pulling teeth for me to do this) was an 800m (2 laps). I felt like I was going to die of exhaustion. Watching my teammates run 1500m or 3000m felt unfathomably long and I had no desire to try it.

The Vancouver Sun Run is 10K, which is 25 laps of a track. I trained on my own leading up to it and my goal was to run the whole thing without stopping (mission accomplished, and I even got a time I’m really pleased with!) My glory days of jumping beyond 4 meters in long jump are over, but last Sunday’s run proved to myself there are things my body can do now that I never thought I could do then, didn’t even attempt to.

I like surprising myself.

And I think there’s a wonderful metaphor in this about getting older. Maybe it’s not about higher or faster or stronger, but about lasting longer, building endurance, taking things slow and steady and, though it may sound like a given, finishing.

Are there things you’re doing now that you never dreamed about doing then?