What If

About two weeks ago I did a podcast interview with Chris Russell, who I met via Twitter. Chris' website is RunRunLive.com and you can check out our conversation there in Episode 105. Chris, unlike me, knows what he is doing, and I think did an admirable job getting me to mumble a few things about my amputation journey.

Now for the good stuff: one of Chris' friends suggested to him that their running sphere take up donations to buy me a Cheetah running prosthesis. Here is someone who doesn't know me from Sasquatch, but a fellow runner who truly sympathizes with me. I was completely overwhelmed with this act of incredible kindness. I sat for a long time just staring at that email at a complete loss for words.

I explained that I am working towards getting a running foot, but if my avenues for obtaining one falls through then I would gratefully accept the offer. As runners we are fiercely independent and self-reliant because it is the nature of our sport. We support each other through PRs and PWs, celebrating those days of near-perfection and commiserating when injuries deny us our release. Toward this end I have been saving for the contingency that I might not get sponsored because I know this: I will have my running blade.

*******

I've tried to explain what it's like on this side of the fence of the able-bodied and disabled: imagine blindfolding yourself for one week to see what it is like to be sightless. Stumping your big toe on every item in your domicile. Finding walls with your nose. Peeing on your pajamas. Thing is, after a week you could remove the handicap and return to the sighted world, perhaps a little worse for the broken toe but nothing that won't heal.

It is just not the same thing as a blind person, who will never see again, who will always have to negotiate a sighted world. Yet a blind person is going to experience life, only differently. But no one can know what it is to be blind until the light is extinguished.

I regret having to lose my foot, but I do not regret for one second the things I have seen from this new life perspective.  It serves no purpose to think "what if" and I don't dwell on it.

*******

As lifetime runners, we can imagine what it is like to not run for many reasons. Disease. Injury. Time constraints. Maybe a pesky hurricane. I recall years ago when my ankle first started really bothering me, and talking to Jennifer about whether or not I could enter wheelchair races with that aching foot. I thought about it for some time but decided, for me, it was not running and not something I wanted to pursue except, perhaps, as cross-training.

I think what made me feel so good about this donation offer had nothing to do with whether or not a dime would be collected, but that fellow runners could understand what "not running" meant and would come to my rescue if I needed help.

Runners rise above and I am honored to fly with you.

*******

What I am thinking about is the Charlie Post race this weekend. I had wanted to do the 15k, but the Achilles aggravation caused me to back off my distance training. I missed the race for several years due to the old ankle problems, but not anymore. I will be doing the 5k come rain or shine, most likely the former. The weather for this race is almost always challenging, often windy, cold, and perhaps spitting raining. I can't wait to be on the starting line, thinking:

It is a good day to run.

A very good day.

Shoot the Amputee

After my extraordinary day at the Riverfront Race festival, the week turned bipolar when I lost my sister. I did run 15 miles for the week with 5 miles on Sunday. I have been religiously doing several Achilles exercises and running every other day; the 5 miles was essentially pain free and I only have a minor amount of swelling around the Achilles. Beginning this week I will add to the length on my runs and then next week, if all goes well, I will add more running days.

I will continue to use races as speed work - tempo runs - with alternating weeks of shorter intervals, but no Emil Zatopek heroics. I have to get it though my thick Blalock skull that I need to build my mileage these days.

 Baxter and his littermate at the Pitt Street trolley bridge during recovery

On Friday I met local runner/reporter David Quick at Alhambra Hall in Mt. Pleasant for a pic session. David is writing an article or column about my amputee running journey; we've talked on the phone and I gave him my blog info for more details as even I can't remember them all anymore. We were going to run together but he is nursing a sore hamstring so he wisely chooses to not stress it further.

David took a few pics of me and my prosthesis and as I ran toward the old Pitt Street trolley bridge, he would drive and stop along the way to get some shots of my running. I kidded him about needing to use his high speed settings as even my sprinting is reminiscent of that old joke:

Q: How can you tell when an ultramarathoner is sprinting?

A: You can't.

We finished up the shoot and I continued on my run. I was hoping to make 4 miles but my Achilles would not loosen up enough to do that comfortably, so I headed back to the SUV after 3. I use to often train in the old village of Mt. Pleasant; since a popular 5k race is done there I liked to do a 3 mile tempo run on the course. There is plentiful shade from the mighty live oaks lining the streets, something much appreciated on long summer days.

After the run I stretched against a handicapped parking sign - well, I just had to, it seemed to be the right thing to do for a one-footed guy. It was a good run. And in time it will soon be better.

Larry Wiley, my prosthetist, wrote to me on Wednesday that I should come in for a followup and discuss the "real" running leg.

Odd that timing.

And not at all.

A Living Truth

Catfish Row, oil on canvas, Marcia Blalock Axson, 1968

In my post "My Sister Flies Away" on Sunday I wrote:

"My sister's funeral will be on Thursday. She had very little but leaves great riches in her loving children, Catharine, Megan, and Casey. I cannot help but think she left so much undone, so much potential that this world will never know. It is our loss. It is my loss. It is also my hope that none of us leave this place with lives undone, that in the striving there is the victory."

While talking to my Aunt Lib at the service about this very thing, my tiny brain exploded. It happens. I had a revelation. My sister, the teacher, and her students had something to teach me. I am an older dog after all.

More than half of the chapel was filled with students that my sister had taught and who loved her. I had several emails from parents and kids and her obituary guestbook is filled with loving notes of what my sister meant to them. Many came up to the family to express their sympathy and admiration for Marcia. I wish I had more comforting words for them but I am still in disbelief she is, indeed, gone.

So what is the purpose of a life? We plan and scheme and set ourselves on a path, but few of us realize such detailed dreams. I do believe that when life is taken as a whole, and no more or less than what it offers, we will always find our way. Marcia died with few possessions. She had no money, no home of her own, not even a car at the time.

The things she did not have mattered not; she touched many children's lives, helping them along this rocky and sometimes desperate road we all travel. A hand to hold, a kind word, a shoulder to cry on. She instilled the love of literature in many, and planted some quiet seeds of knowledge in others that will bloom when no one is there to see it. This is the lesson she taught me on this rainy Thursday afternoon, that her riches were the young minds and futures of these children, and she loved them as her own.

*******

My dad Talmadge is gone. My older brother David is gone. My sister Marcia is now gone. Three remain: my mother Betsy, younger brother Mark Talmadge, and myself. This all seems very strange to me, that half of my family is silent and I will not see them, hear them, or touch their hands on this earth again.

Yes, they all live within my memory but one day even that will fade and vanish. My sister's life, one in a billion links, will go on long after we are all gone and forgotten. Something born of her life today and carried forward by her students will not only survive but flourish. And in that bright light, she does have eternal life.

*******

The following words are from my well-worn copy of "How Green Was My Valley" by Richard Llewellyn. These few excerpts are from last passage in the book. Mr.Gruffydd (Griffith) was the narrator's pastor and mentor:

    It is strange that the Mind will forget so much, and yet hold a picture of flowers that have been dead for thirty years and more.

    But you have gone now, all of you, that were so beautiful when you were quick with life. Yet not gone, for you are still a living truth inside my mind. So how are you dead, my brothers and sisters, and all of you, when you live with me as surely as I live myself.

    Are my friends all dead, then, and their voices a glory in my ears?
    No, and I will stand to say no, and no again.
    In blood, I say no.

    Is Mr. Gruffydd dead, him, that one of rock and flame, who was friend and mentor, who gave me his watch that was all in the world he had, because he loved me? Is he dead, and the tears still wet on my face and my voice cutting through rocks in my throat for minutes while I tried to say good-bye, and, O God, the words were shy to come, and I went from him wordless, in tears and with blood.
    Is he dead?
    For if he is, then I am dead, and we are dead, and all of sense a mockery.

    How green was my Valley, then, and the Valley of them that have gone.

*******

"Fix you"

*****

(P.S. In Mount Pleasant in the small subdivision of Chelsea Park, you will find Llewellyn Road. I named this street and most others in this neighborhood.)

Somewhere

On the day my sister died, Jennifer and I drove up to meet family members at my niece's house. As soon as we arrived I saw one of the most brilliant rainbows as I've ever seen, then two, then three fainter ones, although the third lowest one is not visible in the picture above. 

 If I were to play the music for my sister's service it would be these songs. Oh, there are many others but I would have loved for Marcia to have heard these. I could not find a link to the main song that I would have played in honor of my sister as the daughter of Betsy. I had generally passed over this tune when playing the Kate Rusby's CD "Awkward Annie" but just happened to listen to it yesterday and was floored by the lyrics to "Daughter of Heaven":

Daughter of heaven Oh, daughter of now
Drifting away and don't make a sound
We'll cry when we hear that you ran from this town
She's gone to a new place now
She's gone to a new place now

Daughter of heaven Oh, daughter of now
The stars are your jewels the rubies your crown
We are standing off for your right to stand
She's gone to a new place now
She's gone to a new place now

Daughter of heaven Oh, daughter of now
Your eyes they were closed and your hands they were bound
There's a time in the past when I had to come down
She's gone to a new place now
She's gone to a new place now

Daughter of heaven Oh, daughter of now
Drifting away and don't make a sound
We'll cry when we hear that you ran from this town
She's gone to a new place now
She's gone to a new place now

She's gone to a new place now

 *******

This song is quite stunning. My mind wanders back to western North Carolina and the land of my Scottish ancestors:

High on the Hill

(click on above)

And this one, the original lyrics were by the Scottish port Robert Tannahill and is very moving:

Blooming Heather 
(click on above)

*******

I have some old home movies transferred to DVD of my family from 1959 through the early 70s. I have two DVDs of the earliest movies and enough film to do probably 4 or 5 more. I've been doing this every year as Christmas presents to the family as it too expensive to do all at once. I hate Marcia will not see the others but she did see them on the old family projector, what few minutes it ran without "losing the loop" or burning the film when it stopped. They are like looking back in time, and it is sometimes hard to watch, to see those kids who were us, those young parents, and pets long gone.

Yet, for all the craziness on that celluloid, there is a certain beauty in those captured moments at the Angel Oak, or White Point Gardens, or vacation at Blowing Rock. At the latter my brother David, as a young man, is seen running up to the edge of the famous rock outcropping. He was ever so fearless, afraid of nothing and especially not afraid of any consequences he might incur. He lies not far from that rock now, surrounded by the beauty of the gentle Blue Ridge Mountains.

Our family was six, now there are three. My mom Betsy, my younger brother Mark, and myself. In that realization I have very odd feelings of our mortality.

To paraphrase Gibran: We do not know the depth of our love until the hour of passing.

*******

 Nothing Will Die

When will the stream be aweary of flowing
Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And nature die?
Never, oh! never, nothing will die?
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

(The link on the title goes to a video from the end of the movie, "The Elephant Man." I gave Marcia my poster of this movie for a Christmas present a few year ago.)

Icarus Unbound

morning.
the mist embraces my marsh.
sunrise.
up. UP.
run to it.
embrace this day.
this gift

High Flight

After spending all day making funeral arrangements with the family, I came home, changed my clothes, and went for a 3 mile run. My Achilles area was swollen some but no pain, and usually running helps reduce the swelling a bit. Running has always had a useful side affect of stress reduction, something I sorely need from the workplace and life at times.

It was good to clear my head and think of little else other than breathing and where my next step would be placed. I did catch myself thinking - why am I not thinking about recent events - only to find myself back in my mindless rhythm:

breathe...step...step...breathe

breathe...step...step...breathe

I need to sleep and dream of flying.

*******

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

    Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

My Sister Flies Away

 Photo from left, nephew Casey Axson, niece Catharine Clopper, my departed sister Marcia, niece Megan Axson, my mom Betsy Blalock, me, SIL Debbie and my brother Mark Blalock

On March 18, 1950, a baby girl was born to Betsy and Talmadge Blalock. Beautiful brown sleepy eyes, her life seemed to me to be one that either missed the path not taken or took that overgrown trail. But now it is clear it is that high road, the one that rises above us and disappears beyond our reach.

Today is Sunday, January 17, 2010. We were to have some friends over for dinner and I was cleaning the cat's litter boxes when I heard my cell ring. Oh, I'll call them when I get done I thought. Then is heard it ring again and I immediately thought...what has happened....

First message is from my mom, hysterical. Second is from my nephew, Casey.

My only sister is dead.

How is it you can live for 56 years and death takes all that time, bundles it up into the tiniest point, and poof it is gone just like that? My sister's life, millions if not billions of events of life, now gone into the dust of stars.

I wrote this on Facebook, to family and friends who responded to my step-daughter Becca's and my wife Jennifer's updates today:

I'd like to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers for the passing of my sister Marcia B. Axson. She was a talented artist, teacher, lover of English literature, and knew more movie trivia than Wikipedia. She never met an animal she didn't love and would do without to help them. She passed from this place quickly, and I hope if there is a life or existence beyond this one, know your lost pets are in the best of care.

*******

Here is the body of an email from Marcia shortly after I told her I was going to have the amputation of my right foot:

February 16, 2009

How could I possibly be sad when you have the chance to run again? I am with you 100% and I know everything will work out. I love you and am here no matter what you need. I am going to print the article (Tom White) when I get back to school. My printer is eternally out of ink. Tell Jennifer to let me know if she needs anything as well. You are a very brave man. I'm sure David is celebrating for you. too! God bless you, my incredible brother.

Your sister, Marcia

*******  

Later the same day:  

February 16, 2009

 
I have always known that you never quit. I think it must be a family trait. We are all given burdens or difficulties in life and how we respond to them cultivates us into who we are. great line from Steel Magnolias..."That which doesn't kill us only makes us stronger." Amen to that. We have such a supportive family. Daddy would be so PROUD. I love you! Keep me posted on all developments. I am here for you.

Your soon to be thinner sister,
Marcia 

*******

My sister fought weight loss and was addicted to nicotine. As an able-bodied runner I often tried to get her to walk the the Flowertown 5k, thinking maybe I could help her change her destructive behavior. As an amputee I had hoped maybe she would have some incentive to make a real change.

February 17, 2009 

Well...yes. I have committed myself to losing this weight. I am slowly killing myself. I want to be around to see you run in the Azalea Flowertown race in 2010! Who knows? Maybe I can trot along, too! Have a blessed day! Love you! Marcia

*******

And this defines the love Marcia had for animals, even the sympathy for the loss of our cat sweet Kiki and best friend Snickers:

February 20, 2009 

Mom just told me about precious Snickers and I know Jennifer and you are devastated. I am still crying. I am so very sorry. I know this is particularly heartbreaking after the loss of your cat. I don't know any words to say to relieve your pain other than I know so well how you are feeling. I love you both so much. I wish I could be there to give you both a hug.
Marcia

*******

This is the next to the last email I received from my sister. She had sent me a link to the website of Nick Vujicic months earlier and I had sent her a link to his YouTube video.

November 5, 2009

I knew you would like it. There is no stopping the human spirit imbued with faith, love, hope, determination and family! You will always be my hero. I love you so much. By the way, I have a new job at a bookstore here in Summerville. The store is Here Be Books. The owner is training me to do everything, including running the store. I'll be part-time for now making only minimum wage, but at least I am making some money and am so thankful for that. Sometimes, once you find a job, other more lucrative possibilities surface! What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Hope to see you soon. Kiss Baxter for me!

Your crazy sister 

******* 

 My sister's funeral will be on Thursday. She had very little but leaves great riches in her loving children, Catharine, Megan, and Casey. I cannot help but think she left so much undone, so much potential that this world will never know. It is our loss. It is my loss. It is also my hope that none of us leave this place with lives undone, that in the striving there is the victory.

I will be running the Flowertown 5k in the memory of my sister, She will be there trotting by my side, whispering, you will always be my hero....