Wake up. Turn on your cell. Get pelted with the handful of phone calls you missed. Return one. The person who answers doesn’t want to deliver the news. You know what the person will say. The number of calls and who made them tipped you off. Still need to hear it. Your mother died of a heart attack. No surprise. She’d been throwing her health away with both hands, physical, emotional, mental, most of your life. Hang up. Microburst of tears. You’re not sure why you’re crying. Stop. Not all mothers deserve to be mourned. Yours is one of these. Call your husband. Ask him to tell your son later.

Hit the shower. You’ve got a job to get to. Your mother dying isn’t a tragedy. Go to work. Call the friend who’s known you since you were five. You’re on your way to pick up your race packet during lunch. The Greatest Spectacle in Running is the next day and yes it’s 13.1 miles and no you are not missing it. Friend can’t believe you’re not planning the funeral. That you’re running the next day. Tell her you abdicated that responsibility a couple years ago. Remind her why you did it. Work some more.

Go home. Prepare your favorite pre-race supper now that you’re running: chicken with shallots and rosemary and a little heap of pasta. Your running coaches tell you carb loading isn’t a thing anymore, but you like this part of your new tradition. You started running half marathons instead of walking them, this one in particular after you kicked your family of origin outta your life. While the sauce reduces, tell your husband you don’t think you’ll go to the monster-mother’s funeral. You’d like to see for yourself she’s dead, but you don’t want to deal with the remaining people you’re related to. The relief on his face matches yours. Call your college pal, your sister from another mother, who tells you: Funerals are for the living.

Sip a shot of bourbon while you’re making supper. Sip another afterward. This will be a mistake because you’re running the next day but hey, it’s not like you’re out to win your age group. You just want to run a race for the first time since you were twelve. Run for the little girl who didn’t know how much she loved running until she did it. Four years after Title IX and you finally found your sport. Softball bored you stupid. You couldn’t keep the girls’ basketball rules straight. Then, sixth-grade track team. 440 relay. You wore Cortez. Wish you still had them. Monster-mother bought them for you, but you can’t redeem her with this memory. Her need to be admired by the old buddy from down home who worked in the shoe department is the reason you ended up in your first running shoes. You were desperate for some Chuck Taylors. Old buddy steered you to the Nikes. You’re glad he did. Those yellow and black shoes, meant to be the gold and black colors of your school, lived on your feet until you started seventh grade. Had to save them for gym. Your entry to junior high was horrendous. Teacher who ran the yearbook nixed you from the staff because you said you might try out for the track team. Questioned your ability to do both. Didn’t even talk to you first. That was supposed to be your path into journalism. You need a job. A woman with a job could get away from the monsters. Those WoodStein cats showed you the truth could knock down monsters.  You want to learn to write truth so you can one day write yours. This sends you into your first panic attack. You’re sure you’ll never make it now and it’s all you’ve ever wanted: away and writing and truth. You start to waffle about the track team. Nothing can get between you and the door. Then someone stole the golden slippers out of your locker. You were in the shower after gym. You feigned illness for weeks after that. You can’t remember how much school you missed. But let’s be honest. You weren’t faking. This was depression. You know that now. You probably knew it then but didn’t have words for it. No grown-up recognized it, or if they did, no one helped you do anything about it. 

Embrace insomnia the night your mother dies. You can’t believe the relief you feel. You feel guilty that you feel relieved. Your mother died. Shouldn’t you feel something else?

Forget running the race of your life. The lack of sleep hits you before you’re out of Haughville. You regret the bourbon halfway around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Slather on the sunscreen. It’s a sunny, hot, humid day in Indianapolis. Your unrestrained, long, rusty, curly hair goes feral. You look like a wild woman. You are. Finish in a little over three hours because you’re walking on the way back downtown. It’s not as good as your previous year’s finish. In 2011, you shaved an hour off your 2010 time. You also lightened your load by about 200 pounds because you weren’t tethered to the monster-father. You had to walk the mini with him for years because, well, you’re aren’t sure why. He wanted to do it and it was your job to make sure he survived to the finish line?

Get a massage the day after the race from your other sister of another mother. This will bless you in ways you didn’t know you needed. Old frenemy calls after she gets home from your mother’s viewing. Berates you for your absence. Realize she had to drive past the exit for your neighborhood to deliver this sermon. Decide that if she loved you, she would have left the funeral home and come to your home when she didn’t find you there. Funerals are for the living.

Miss work the day of your mother’s burial. Keep expecting to break down in sobs, maybe have an emotional reaction of some kind. It doesn’t come. Just more relief mixed with regret at the mother you ended up with instead of the mother you needed. Let your son take you to his gym. Work out a little. Remember how much you hate stationary bikes. Spinning wheels and getting nowhere feels too much like living with the monsters when you were a kid. Your bike took you miles away from them back then. You used to imagine what it would be like to keep riding. To not go home.

See the most aptly named movie you and your son could have chosen for this day: The Avengers. Recognize that you have avenged yourself, your twelve-year-old self, and all those other versions of you who were hurt by the monsters you grew up with. They didn’t win. You did.

– Rebecca Trimpe