CAL.E.'S Corner

Well, Cal.E.'s out of Ad-Seg. She is still in rehab, though. They are going to let her watch her favorite baseball team, the Houston Astros, play in the World Series. They are playing her grandfather's favorite team, the Atlanta Braves. Whichever team wins, her family will be both happy and sad. I hope that, if the Astros do not win, it will not drive her back to the catnip. She has a real problem with it. Other cats can use it and not become addicted to it. NOT Cal.E., she is addicted, so she stays in rehab for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I will continue to share excerpts from d.c. scot's biographical book: Beyond the Thirteenth Mile; The Iron Man Chronicles.

CHAPTER 3: WHAT WOULD MARY DO? Bike leg: Mile thirty-seven: Should I take my first pack of vitamins now? Sugar Mountain is coming up. It is a 15 percent grade. It is a six-loop course. That means that we must climb that steep hill, under our own power, six times. They knock hills down on roads now so that a car or truck will not have as difficult of a time climbing hills that are as steep as Sugar Mountain. Let me think.. I have three packets of vitamins. 112 + 26 - 37 is.. 101. Divided by three is.. about 33 more miles before I take the next packet. I will wait until the next transition area to take the last one. It is a little early, but I need something. It is really hot. Especially for October. I am getting a little tired. Some of these triathletes look like they are getting a little discouraged. They need some encouragement. I wish that my friend Mary was here. She would encourage ALL of us to keep going.... ****************************************************************** It had been a busy day as most days are in the fast-paced twenty-first century. My next triathlon was only eight days away. It would be a good measure of where I stood in my training since this course had been designated as a testing ground for Olympic hopefuls. The swim was to be my first competitive swim in the open water, a 500-meter distance with each age group starting in waves five minutes apart. The bike leg was a 22-mile ride on a busy highway (which was only partially closed.) The run leg, although it was only 3 miles long, was what really had me worried, though. I had been having a lot of pain along the bottom of my foot, which I attributed to a simple, if painful, stone bruise. A 3-week break between competitions did nothing to help it heal, however, and it kept getting worse. " It will heal over enough time," I thought, "I'll rest it after this race." ******************************************************************* Adelina and I had decided to do a fifteen mile bike ride at the local park that morning,and I had been fortunate to escape a confrontation with a 10-foot alligator who, fortunately for me, was hunting small prey instead of a week’s worth of meals. Under different circumstances, the pain in my foot would have been the least of my worries. Fortunately, though, most alligators living in state parks are not aggressive towards humans, except during mating season. Since it was that time of year, I feel very fortunate to have escaped this particular confrontation with a ten-foot male alligator. ******************************************************************* After calling my father to wish him a happy birthday, I took my faithful companion, my four-year-old German Shepherd, Alice for a three-mile run. (She had been greatly distressed that morning when she hadn't been allowed to accompany us to the park. She let her displeasure be known by whining at the fence until my truck pulled out of her sight, as far as I can tell.) Alice is a good dog and had been an ideal addition to my life when I needed someone or something to care for the most- right after my divorce. She has gotten me through some major disappointments since then- a couple of broken relationships and a broken engagement amongst other things. Sometimes, just a gentle nudge, a handshake (her favorite trick) or a "doggy kiss" and then a playful romp around the living room from her would put me in better spirits. On this blisteringly hot, humid August afternoon, however, Alice decided that discretion was the better part of valor and bolted for home halfway through our run. (I couldn't really blame her, either.) Not even Alice could get me through what was to happen that day, though. I got an unexpected phone call in the middle of the afternoon. "Jed, did you hear about Mary?" came Betty's question from the other end of the line. "Yes," I said, "I knew that she was moving, was it this weekend?" I asked, unknowingly. "Well, yes, Mary was moving." Betty hesitated, and my heart and stomach sank in the next instant. “Last night, around midnight," Betty halted, “Mary and her daughter were driving through Amarillo, and the driver of an S.U.V. lost control in the rain, jumped the median, and totaled Mary's car. Mary was killed instantly. Her daughter, who was driving, is in a coma and in critical condition. What is even sadder, “Betty continued, "is that her teenage son, who was riding in the moving truck with his uncle, ran back to the car after watching the accident in the rear-view mirror. He found them both, not knowing if either was dead or alive." "I-I didn't know," I stammered. "Yes," said Betty, "She was a sweetheart." These words, through our shock, couldn't do justice to both of our feelings about Mary. She was, without a doubt, the gentlest, kindest woman that I had ever known- the epitome of what a Christian lady should be. In the beautiful eulogy that her best friend, Leta, gave her, Leta paid her highest compliment that I have ever heard about anyone. ''In the ten plus years that I have known Mary," Leta tearfully began, "I have never heard her say one bad word about anyone. " “If there was one quote that I would like to be said by my best friend at my funeral," I thought, “that would be it." Thinking back, even though I had only known Mary for two years, I never remembered Mary saying a negative word about anyone or anything. In fact, I doubted if she had even so much as killed a fly on purpose. At Mary's wake, I was shocked to learn, along with several other people, that Mary suffered from the chronic illness of Lupus. She was moving to Colorado to be in a less harsh climate for her lungs since this disease can affect one’s lungs negatively. Mary, apparently, was struggling with this aspect of this chronic illness. She had never complained to anyone about anything, so this took most of us by surprise. Eerily, she had made one of her other close friends promise that he would sing her favorite song at her funeral before she moved. Joe had reluctantly agreed, after much coaxing from Mary. Although Joe choked up when he was trying to sing the song, he recovered and sang “Heaven is My Throne, Earth is My Footstool'' beautifully in memory of his promise to Mary. I remembered later that I had had the privilege of riding to a 5-K fun run with Mary. I had been extremely disappointed with my time. Mary, however, who had walked the whole course, was so happy that she could finish, she wanted to record her time for perpetuity. I just wanted to forget mine. My time was a lot slower than I had planned on running. Remembering this, I made a decision. "This race," I declared, to myself, "is for Mary." I decided to do the course as Mary lived her life, enjoying every moment of it and encouraging people along the way, no matter what happened or how I felt. ******************************************************************** The day of the race, I had no idea what to expect from an open water wave swim. I was soon to learn, however, that it is somewhat akin to running with the bulls in Barcelona. After being kicked in the face several times, I inhaled several ounces of pond water. This prompted me to purge my lungs for several minutes before continuing on. The bike ride went fairly smoothly, but that is my strength, and the run was still to come. This leg is my biggest weakness. Having an injury in one of my feet did not improve the situation. My foot throbbed with every step, and coming around the last turn on the course, I stepped off of the pavement, spraining my left ankle sharply. However, throughout the run, I kept asking myself one question, "What would Mary do?" Every time I would run up on someone, I would ask myself this question, instead of trying to outrun him or her. "Come on," I said to one particularly discouraged-looking redhead, “You can do it. It's not that far, and I'll run in with you." "All right," she said, encouraged again. She ran out of sight and to the finish line. I never caught back up with her. I finished only seconds over my two-hour goal and collected my prize- a finisher's medal made of heavy metal and fashioned after an Olympic medal. When my legs had recovered sufficiently, I picked some roses from the garden in my yard and wrote II Timothy 4: 7-8 on the back of my race number. This verse reads, "I have fought the good fight, and I have finished the race, not only I, but all of those who go before me." I took the roses, the race number, and the finisher's medallion put them in a plastic sack and tied it to the frame of my bike. I rode to Luke's house because we had planned to ride together to the cemetery. I received no answer at his door, however. In a way, I was glad to be alone on this ride, because of the personal nature of the journey. Luke knew the way to the cemetery better than I did. However, I found it eventually, in spite of taking a wrong turn that made the ride five to ten miles longer and resulted in a confrontation with a territorial dog. I arrived at the graveyard unscathed. When I found Mary’s grave, I knelt by it and said a short prayer. Then, I placed my race number and the roses on top of it. I placed the medallion around the roses and the number. "This is yours, Mary," I said aloud, as tears began to trickle, and then flow down my cheeks. They were the tears whose absence was hidden by a pair of sunglasses at both Mary's and my grandmother's funeral two years before. They didn't stop until I walked through my front door. They were tears of sadness, tears of relief, and tears of joy. You see Mary is home now, in heaven, along with my grandmother. In a way, so is my medallion. It serves as a makeshift headstone as it hangs from a wreath of roses that Mary's mother placed at the head of her grave. Then, I'm sure, she hung the medallion from the wreath, just as I had intended. No one ever deserved it more than Mary.