Running for Joe
Like most of us, I've really enjoyed watching the Olympics this year. The fun, the skating, the skiing, the touching stories. But the skate by Joannie Rochette two days after her mother's death is pretty near impossible to watch with out shedding a tear or two.
Especially as moms, watching her ache is incredibly painful, and yet moving. If you haven't seen the performance, you can watch it here. I highly recommend you take a few minutes to view it.
The cheers from the crowd as she nails every landing give me chills. Her shaky smile through such visible mourning is absolutely heart-wrenching. There is something so moving when we, as human beings, take on our goals, our dreams, with those we've lost so clearly beside us. The spirit of her mom, in whatever form that means, was there during that skate.
She scored the highest marks of her career. Something magical happens to us when we take on living for those who have left us.
As I watch Joannie, the new "daughter of Canada," I can't help think of my own recent loss.
Last week an old friend of mine passed away from acute liver failure. And, as happens to all of us when we hear something awful like this, I felt many things at once. These feelings were intensified as I watched Joannie. My old friend Joe wasn't my mother, he wasn't even one of my closest friends, but he was someone who touched my life, and he was suddenly gone.
When I heard the news about Joe, my thoughts immediately fell to his wife and their four small children. How is there any justice in the world when a father of four is taken from us but someone like Osama Bin Laden is still alive? Why did Joannie have to skate without her mom there? She was alive and OK just last week. How many mornings did she drive her daughter to skating practice, and now she misses this moment in her daughter's life?
And of course, for me, moments like these bring up my own mortality. Both as a mother and what that experience will be like for my children, and as a human being knowing that one day I'll go too. I think news of death does that for all of us, but even more so when it's someone our own age, someone with small children and someone that we remember as being so full of life.
The evening after I heard the news about Joe, I was running at the gym. I was pushing myself to run harder, faster and frustrated by my physical limitations.
Then my iPod filled my ears with the the song "Swim" by Jack's Mannequin.
The song written by Andrew McMahon, the lead singer, after he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The song is about refusing to give in to the disease – to swim through it all, and to swim for all of the rights, and wrongs, in the world.
This night, as I felt my chest burn in protest to my current sprint, my mind turned to Joe.
I started to cry.
There I was, pushing myself harder and harder, frustrated that my body doesn't respond like it did when I was 18, when in fact, my body is healthy and strong. It runs when I tell it to run. It loses weight when I tell it to (though not without a fight), it picks up my daughter, it wakes up in the middle of the night when my son has a nightmare and I fly down the hall to comfort him, it's grown two human beings, it loves my husband and it takes care of me as I multi-task all day every day.
Joe's body didn't respond that way. And as Joannie put her hand over her beating heart after her skate, I wonder if she thought of her mother's heart, the heart that had failed her just two days earlier.
I was suddenly taken over by two emotions at once: guilt and joy.
Guilt that I'm not more grateful for my own health, for my strength and well-being, and the health and strength of my closest loved ones.
Joy in remembering Joe and the type of person he was. I remembered a photograph his wife had posted of him in the hospital a few weeks ago with all of his kids around him. Joe, complete in hospital gown and bruised forearms from IV needles, was hugging his kids and smiling.
As I listened to McMahon ask me to "Swim for the lost politicians who don’t see their greed as a flaw" I ran for Joe. I ran for his kids. I ran for his smile, for his big baritone laugh and for how he would always yell "ALOHA!" down the halls of our high school. I ran as I heard the words:
"You gotta swim for nights that won't end, swim for your family, your lovers, your sisters and brothers and friends"
I cried for my own luck that I got to be the one running. I cried for the nights that Joe spent alone in the hospital waiting for the liver transplant that never came.
Then, during my run tonight as the TVs at the gym kept flashing Joannie's moment over and over again, I shed a few tears for her. I cried as a mother watching someone's child in mourning, I cried as a human being in awe of her ability and her tenderness, and I cried as a mom hoping my childen will always know that I will be there in spirit the way her mother clearly was for her.
Joe was someone who touched all of us with laughter and kindness, and I am sure his spirit is living on through his children as well.
People like Joe and Joannie Rochette make their marks on us for a long long time. And because they do, those they've lost, and those we've lost, continue to live on.
It's with gratitude and love that I thank Joe for being a part of my life and for reminding me, years after the last time I saw him, what it is to love, to be happy and to enjoy life.
To Joannie, nothing will ever make it go away. You are now a daughter to all of us.
To Joe, rest in peace my sweet friend.
Author: Sarah
