Running Away, Running Toward, Just Running

Last month I spoke at my brother's memorial service. For some reason I don't understand, I keep having a nagging feeling about something I wish I had said then. So as we head into Memorial Day weekend, I will put it out into the universe by saying it here.

About five years before he died, my brother Robbie ran away to Africa. At least it seemed to me like he was running away. His life had become overwhelming, and he didn't want to--or maybe couldn't--face it anymore. Over these last five years, though, I've come to believe that some part of him was instinctively running toward something. Something that would be a balm to his troubled soul.

Robbie would call or email me from Nairobi from time to time, usually with frantic requests to help him settle some unresolved issue from his past. But every once in a while, he'd send a simple message to tell me about some happy experience he had. Almost always those experiences were connected to a Kenyan family into which he had been welcomed warmly. Sometimes he sent pictures, usually of children in the family, but never of himself.

I didn't see Robbie's face for five years.

When my dad flew to Nairobi in January to see Robbie in the hospital, talk with his doctors, and begin to make arrangements to fly him home to Boston, he was able to meet Robbie's adopted Kenyan family. They gave him three photographs of Robbie taken before he got sick. In each of the photos, Robbie has a broad smile, which I believe is evidence that he found what he was running toward.

Today I ran the 5k that I signed up for shortly after returning home from my brother's service, wanting, somehow, to take more conscientious charge of my life and face challenges I often don't want to face.

Here I am smiling before the run.

And after.

In between? Just a lot of running. But run I did!