As I sat in the pew at St. Elizabeth’s, my eyes rapidly
shifted--from the narrow stained-glass windows reaching a dozen feet to the earthy rich beams stretching across the ceiling to the silver urn perched upon the altar where my
aunt’s remains stood.
It was here—this faded grandiloquent church from my childhood—where
I was to marry Mr. Pulitzer in 1999. I had not been back to the village parish since then—“then” which was a consultation with the toupee-wearing
monsignor who was to conduct our nuptials. I hadn’t personally known the high-haired
priest other than through reporting assignments, community engagements.
But Monsignor Toupee and Mr. Pulitzer had forged a bond over
a two-year period when the church leader shepherded a pilgrimage to Kosovo. Mr.
Pulitzer had accompanied the missionaries, chronicling their work in the
war-torn republic where poverty and hopelessness held ground in what was deemed
the first humanitarian war. His startling photos of vacant orphans left shell-shocked in shelled
buildings dotted my walls. Through our years together, he developed strange ailments of pained limbs, sore
joints, and jarring headaches that he blamed on chemical fallout and polluted waters.
Yet through this experience, Monsignor Toupee and Mr. Pulitzer became friends on some
level, and even though I didn’t entirely trust a member of the clergy with a
head rug, I agreed to have this man marry us.
Of course, this exchange of vows would never happen, and my
life is better for it.
But returning to St. E's for Millie’s memorial reminded me that
life moves on, that we sometimes make things out to be bigger than they are in
the whole scope of existence. A funeral, as her priest suggested, reminds us that we
not here solely to mourn, but to celebrate the spirit, that we are passing through to
the unknown and shouldn’t get caught up in the trappings that foolishly define
us on this leg of the journey.
Afterward, in the receiving line, I spoke with my cousin,
Nick, an accomplished runner. My aunt was his grandmother, my cousin his mother.
We talked about my training and his training—well, mostly
his. I no longer see him at area races because he has moved to Colorado Springs
to run in higher altitudes and better prepare his body for competition. For a
while, he had been trying to break his marathon PR of 2:58—which he hit twice
both at Marine Corps and at Boston—and he figured he was ready to do so in 2011
at New York.
However, something went wrong. He crashed, burned, crossed the
finish line in a miserable 3:18.
He thought of retreating, throwing in the towel. But the
move to Colorado inspired him to try once more. This past October he hit
Chicago and finally landed it with a 2:53. Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to
know some incredible runners, and I’ve heard enough stories from people with
much more impressive results. But my cousin is my cousin, and while he’s not
going to make a top racing team, he’s a pretty cool guy.
So I asked: Are you doing Boston?
Nah.
No? Why not? You’re more than 10 minutes ahead of a 3:05…
It’s overrated. You do
it once, and you move on. There is too much left in life to worry about one
race and whether you qualify or not.
And so now he’s training for Ironman. Why?
To see how far I can
push myself. To see what
else is out there because life is about so much more, it’s so much more than
wearing a Boston jacket.
As I left, I thought about what he said, about how he—at such
a young age with a promising career as a doctor and a decent corporate
sponsorship for something that is “fun”—has become a man before those old
enough to be his father: humble, down-to-earth, honest. He is real. He is
someone that Monsignor Toupee—king of embellishment and master of façade—could
never be.
He hasn’t set out to impress other people. He doesn’t wait
for approval. His ideals, as uncomplicated as Occam's Razor. He is the salt. He is my kind of people, he is my family.
No comments:
Post a Comment