Nana

On Valentine’s Day, my grandmother (Nana) passed away. She was an amazing little Irish lady whose stature may have been small, but whose impact was not.

Nana was the matriarch of large family. In a family photo with most of us present, it strikes me as profound that, if any one of us in the photo were never born, the landscape of the photo would be altered, but not by a whole lot. Not, that is, until you try to remove either Nana or Grandpa from the equation. Without either of them, none of the rest of us would be in that photograph. Most of us wouldn’t exist at all.

And as if her partial responsibility for my family’s very existence weren’t enough, she also directly influenced me in another way that has had a far-reaching effect on my every day life.

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When I was in middle school, I was a sprinter. I ran the 200m and hurdles. I didn’t really give any thought to anything longer. I liked to go fast and didn’t think I could go far.

One day, early in freshman year of high school, my family and I visited Nana and Grandpa. During the course of a little small talk, my track and field preferences came up. I told her I was a sprinter. She suggested I try the mile, but I didn’t think I could do that.

“You should run long distance,” she told me, “That’s something you can do your whole life.”

At her encouragement, other members of my family present echoed her sentiment as she expressed her belief that I might like it. I should give it a try. And I could tell she really thought I could excel at it. Her encouragement then was the only reason I made an attempt at the mile; it’s the only reason I started running at all.

Skip ahead to the present and look at me now. A large part of my life consists of running or running related activities. Hell, my current livelihood exists only because I’m a runner. My mental health would be far worse if not for running. Most of the smiling I do is while I’m on a run.

I’m currently training for a fifty-mile race. Without Nana, I don’t know if I would ever have even run more than a couple miles at a time. Running has kept me afloat for the past couple years in the midst of my struggle with depression. I can thank Nana for that.

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There’s been a lot of death going around lately. I’ve had two grandparents die about a week apart from each other (different sides of the family). Others I know have been dealing with the deaths of friends and loved ones in recent weeks as well. All of it has got me thinking.

Until very recently, death was a concept for future Jesse to deal with. But now I see mortality as though I stand at the center of a great disc called time. The outer edge of the disc is the end, death. And from the time I was born, that disc has been shrinking.

Now this disc is so expansive that, for the first two decades of my life, I couldn’t see the end. I knew the end existed; I knew it was inevitable, but it was out of sight, out of mind.

As grandparents pass away, I now realize I’m seeing the edge of the disc. It’s out there, distant in my periphery, but clearly visible. It only gets closer from here until, finally, I stand at the center of a tiny, disappearing circle with barely enough room to keep my balance. Then I’ll fall over the side, just like everyone who has gone before me, as will everyone who goes after.

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Now many who read this may think I’m being morbid, but I certainly don’t believe this is a dark sentiment. Death is a natural part of the order of things. We are finite beings, blessed with the brevity of existence, fortunate enough to be part of the cosmic pageant. Our song and dance echoes out into oblivion and beyond.

I’m immensely grateful to be a part of this ridiculous thing we call life. The temporal nature of it in no way diminishes its beauty, but, rather, enhances it. I get to live, breathe. I get to enjoy, suffer.

There is no new human experience, but in our own subjective ways, we each get to experience every ancient sensation for the first time. Life and death have come and gone for eons innumerable, and yet, I feel as though my involvement is somehow novel.

I was not the first to be born, live, and someday die, but this is the first time I’m doing any of these things. And one day, when I’ve gone the way of those who came before, others will continue to be born, to live, and to die until this planet finally dies with the last of us.

Hopefully that will be millions or billions of years from now, but even if it’s less than a few centuries, that doesn’t diminish the beauty of it all. Life doesn’t have to be eternal for it to be worthwhile. It doesn’t have to extend onward to infinity to have beauty. The brevity is part of the profundity.

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So thank you, Nana. And thank you, all who have gone before me. I’m here because of you. I hope my contributions make you proud.

Farewell for now, Nana. You will be missed, but I’m glad you and Grandpa are together once more.