“We hope for ways to corral and control bad fortune, illness, unhappiness, discomfort, and death—all inevitable outcomes that we pretend are anything but.”

Esmé Weijun Wang 

If you only had weeks to live, would you want to know?

This, amongst many other thought fragments, have been moving rapidly through in my head in the past 24 hours. Thoughts of disparate relation and utility. It’s a bit like that year I spent working in a small windowless room, serving on a 24-hour indications and warning watch team. In the middle of the night, when there was nothing going on and no supervision around, we’d launch a dozen colorful super bouncy balls against the walls. As soon as they were airborne, they’d ricochet violently, causing us all to duck and laugh at their incalculable trajectories. These are what thoughts are doing in my brain right now.

What we did while standing our watch was of course the exact opposite of professionalism. But, in doing something so thrilling and amusing on a low-grade scale, it helped to pass the time and provide a dose of tomfoolery during those dreary hours. 

And I think about the passage of time with even greater force today. If I had only weeks upon which I could plant my feet on this earth, of course I would want that time to be well spent. But also, I reckon that I’d devote many days examining how I had spent every preceding hour when I didn’t have any sense of a stop time. Was I wise in how I passed those seemingly endless minutes? Did I laugh enough? Was I silly enough? Did I share my time with those whom I could sense were in need of a bit of a personal rescue?

Call me a kid at heart, but after almost twenty years in my particular profession, one of the memories that most often returns are those super bouncy ball nights.  It endures because it makes me laugh. It endures like memories I have of a similar nature when I was not wearing a uniform. I’m thinking of that summer when I decided to train for a marathon.

I was late to the party in marathon training, and in parallel to my training I was also newly arrived in a city with no friends or support structure. Little did I know that these two trajectories would converge into something remarkable. Kind of like when one of those bouncy balls would bean me upside the head.  I discovered a running group which promised, “No one runs alone.”  Well, this was usually the case, and on my morning runs in the dark I started to get to know the girls out there running. Women from so many backgrounds. It wasn’t long after that I received a text from an unknown number, inviting me to join some of them for brunch. Oh great! I thought, I have friends!

I immediately texted back that I would love to be included…. but then had to add a follow-up message: “Who is this?”  With that, I had rediscovered a sense of belonging— and it was very much a support structure that was Come As You Are. One that would serve me not only through putting in weekend miles up and down the Potomac, but also when we weren’t hydrating or consuming Chocolate Outrage GUs as a sweaty collective.

As the weeks crept closer to October’s end, our runs grew longer and longer. I had initially decided to marathon train because I was going through some personal upheaval; the only way that I could stop myself from thinking was through distance running. This made for a lot of hard work days when I didn’t have the distraction of training. On one evening I was feeling particularly down while sitting alone in my crappy Rosslyn apartment.  I had been trying to change a lightbulb and had managed to briefly electrocute myself.  It set me off, and I started to cry. For some reason, I reached for my phone and tentatively texted one of my new friends.

“HALLINAN, GET OVER HERE.” was her immediate response.  Not knowing what else to do, I dutifully got into my car and drove to S. Edgewood Street. From there she took over. She poured me wine. Or maybe she fed me quinoa. Maybe both. We sat in her living room and we talked about serious stuff. On other days, it would be silly and stupid topics that still served a purpose because of their cumulative effect. She, along with the others, helped me to laugh again and look at life for what it actually was. A bunch of ridiculousness that doesn’t always make sense. It should be enjoyed come what may.

Like the super bouncy ball story, that first phone-a-friend event was just a small blip in my life’s timeline. But even more than randomly throwing a handful of balls against the wall, it was actually something more. The electrocution “Save-Me-From-Myself” story is one in a larger pattern, one that became a regular occurrence. The friends that I made that summer, I grew to rely upon them as a source of refuge. And they would not only provide comfort, but they were an endless well of unconditional love and comedy that helped me to remember the best parts of life.

We all continued running—right up until 25 October, 2009. Many of us ran the marathon that year—and those who didn’t were out on the sidelines to cheer the others on, help to “run us in”, or provide amazing glitter signs that have since become treasured mementos.  And the adventures continued on well past that summer. If you yourself can think of the best memories that you have in your brains—the ones that make you laugh really hard in delight, nostalgia or sheer mortification for how you threw all decorum out the window—then these are the types of memories that I am remembering right now.

So yes, the lingering question about, “If I had weeks to live, would I want to know?” – it continues to knock about. It fills me with an ineffable mixture of profound sadness and joy. Sadness because I know that some memories will never be quite the same, and I will never be able to replicate that magical experience that I encountered ten years ago. But I also feel a sense of pure joy, because I know that someday this will all end, and goddammit I am so lucky to have been included in so many precious memories, surrounded by people who helped turn my life back into something special. I am joyful because I get to carry this part forward.

Whenever I die, I feel as though I will spend a fair amount in self-study, and for sure I will give myself a bit of a critical evaluation. I could have been nice to more people. More patient. Less of a Masshole. And I will think about my running friends. Most of all, I will think about people like Blair, and I will use them as a measuring stick. Was I as willing and as good at opening my home and my heart, like she has managed to do for so many people? Was I as good at laughing at life as she is? Am I as strong as she was when the moment came to share bad news with all of the people I love? Have I done the hard work of investing myself in my community, wherever I find it?  I don’t know if I will measure up, but I know that this is something I will work on for all the days to come.

I think I’d like to be afforded the luxury of not knowing precisely when my last run is going to happen. But the thing that I would like to know, before all of this comes to an end, is whether I really kicked ass in how I lived. Because I know some people who really have, and I truly love them for it. They show the world how it should be done.  And for however long we are all here, that’s all that truly matters.