I have a really good friend who I’ve coached for a few marathons. She lost her mom on January 14th. Jess and I usually communicate via text messages or in person. Our conversations as of late have been more lengthy, so we’ve exchanged a few emails. Upon learning about her mother, I did as best I could to provide some empathy and words of encouragement. Not so much running encouragement, but life and grief encouragement.
I told her about my dad dying in 2006 and how hard that hit me. I told her about how I still think about him every day and I still grieve. But that grief is different now. That grief is good now.
She wrote to me today and said: “Grief comes for me the way runners shits do – inconvenient, messy, watery, and I’m not in the place to deal with it. But you find a way to either suck it back in or just let it rip.”