A Marathon and a Pool Somewhere Near Milwaukee

There are certain memories you never forgot but can’t remember if they ever happened. 

I’m eight years old, tired from a long day of retrieving diving sticks from the bottom of the pool and trying to race my older siblings and cousins. My hair is tangled and plastered against my sunburnt freckled face, and not even the smell of the catered barbecue can get me out of the chlorine and sunshine. I swim up to the ledge, hear Yellow Submarine become clearer as I poke my head above the water, pull my goggles off, rest them on the top of my head, and look up. 

In front of me stands my Uncle Jack in a white polo shirt, swim trunks, and flip-flops asking me about the temperature of the water. Behind him, my Aunt Janet laughs and smiles ever so elegantly, her red hair glowing in the August landscape. My grandma and grandpa, Joan and Jack, sit with her at a patio table, looking regal and kind. 

This memory, perhaps a spliced concoction of many, appears to me often. I will never see any of those dazzling faces again but they’re alive in my memory. They are very alive, around a pool somewhere near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Everyone I’m looking up at in my memory has passed from cancer in the past four years. The grief has often left me feeling like a little power was pulled out of my hands. There was so much love left on the table as one by one I lost another person who helped raise me, to cancer. 

My aunt was a guiding light on how to be a woman with a voice that didn’t have to be the loudest in the room. My uncle was the warmest person I’ll ever know and shared that warmth in music and laughter. My grandpa Jack taught a master class in wit in which I got to study endlessly. My grandma, a true lady in every sense, and the person who taught me to be fearless. 

Earlier in my life, my Grandpa Freddy passed from cancer as well. When he passed it was the first time I ever felt grief. It was the first time I realized how much power cancer really can have. He taught me too many things to list, but I still tie my shoes with bunny ears like he showed me how to do 25 years ago. 

Before last July I had not run a mile since 7th grade. Now, I run until the power I once felt slip away from me is back in my hands and I’m free; the way I felt in that pool somewhere near Milwaukee. Sometimes, when running is hard and I worry if I can keep going, if my heart will explode, if my legs will somehow buckle before my mind is ready to stop; I see all of those faces above. I hear my Uncle Jack say, “We won’t let you fall.” I see my Aunt Janet’s smile, and I know that I can keep moving forward. 

In October 2023, I’m running the Chicago Marathon to raise money for the American Cancer Society, for all of them and so many others.