Playing Through Pain
Dennis once told me that when he died, he wanted me to sprinkle his ashes along the route of the Boston Marathon, his all-time favorite race. He studied its history and was inspired by its champions.
Whenever he was asked, “Does your wife run marathons too?” he’d quip, “No, she’s the sane one in the family.” People would chuckle, but I knew it was true. Dennis’ devotion to running was batshit crazy, but I surrendered to it.
A few years before our tragedy, while waiting at the finish line of one of his many small-town marathons, I saw a young woman runner drop hard to the ground about 30 yards from the goal. Medics rushed to help her, but she fell again. She waved them off when they tried to escort her to an arriving gurney.
Crawling, in obvious pain, she continued to her destination. Most of the spectators cheered her on, but a few of us were stunned that she would not take the advice of professionals who were trying to protect her from further injury.
Dennis crossed the finish line about five minutes after she had finished and had been taken away on that gurney. On the drive home I related the scene in gruesome detail.
“That’s terrific!” Dennis beamed. “She’s a real runner.”
“More like a real idiot,” I shot back, surprised that he didn’t think she had been foolish to bloody her hands and knees to get a little medal on a ribbon.
“Playing through pain is part of the game,” he said as if reciting the Eleventh Commandment.
“In my book, pain that bad means STOP,” I insisted. “It’s nature’s way of saying, ‘Time to give up.’”
“There’s a term for people like you,” Dennis said without a jot of judgment in his voice.
“And that would be…?”
“Captive Nations.”
It was pure Dennis. His essence. His marathons were metaphors for living life with freedom and higher purpose. At that moment he was my Victor Laszlo* in New Balance running shoes and I had a crush on him all over again.
“Do we try to resuscitate a second time?” the ER doctor asked as Dennis lay ashen. Six days before, he had run the 2010 Detroit Free Press Marathon, not knowing it would be his last. He had a full slate of fall and winter races and was ready and able to play through pain.
But now I was the one who was being challenged to adhere to the Eleventh Commandment. I had no idea where the finish line even was, but I knew that when I answered “Yes,” I would crawl as long as it took to get there.
* Victor Laszlo, a main character in the film Casablanca, is a member of the Czech Resistance. He and his colleagues are battling the Nazi occupation. He is principled, passionate, and intelligent. His humane political beliefs are at the core of what drives him.