words by Jack Downey
I really miss my dad. But I don’t feel him, in his absence—which I suppose makes me miss him even more. About ten years ago, I sat alone, humming Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wild World” as he died with me in hospice. Ever since, Dad almost never comes to me—either in dreams, or waking hours: my experience of his afterlife has overwhelmingly been that of deprivation. The only real exceptions have been during long runs.
I run alone most of the time—I’m not part of a crew… I could actually probably count the number of group runs I’ve hit up on one hand (note: I love it as a concept). But I typically think of my running as interior time. But that’s also not really true: these are actually the only times when I feel my father’s presence in an intimate way.
As an immoderate person who got into distance running largely as a coping mechanism for grief, I ran five marathons my first year of training (totally normal behavior), chasing a time goal that I really didn’t understand at the time. The last was a race in Ontario, and I found myself—as I think a lot of us who run in the middle-of-the-front at smaller marathons do—running basically alone after a few miles. It was November and cold and windy, and by 10k I was ready to call it and just find the closest bloody marys available. But just at the half point, we took a sharp right turn, and hit a severe long downhill, and I figured I might as well blow-up my quads and push a bit. And suddenly I had a vision of my dad, just cruising in his wheelchair next to me—blissed-out, and cheering me on, grinning from ear-to-ear, as he lead me down the road for what felt like fifteen minutes. It didn’t feel at all ephemeral: like I could’ve reached out and grabbed him—if his wheelchair wasn’t rolling just out of reach.
Sometimes, when I’m out alone and running hard, I can feel Dad close to me, but in an abstract way: his presence is a benevolent haunting. But I don’t see it. I think a good bit of what keeps me motivated—what I’m running towards—is the hope that I can conjure that vision again.
