The Knock at the Door

by Ryan Manion

  One by one, people picked up their heads, hardened their gazes, and joined him. Pretty soon, every single person in that room had committed to 26.2 miles in honor of Travis. I was conveniently engrossed in a thread in the carpet when I felt a dozen pairs of eyes landing intently on my face. I looked up.

  Now, I had been an athlete in college, but that was almost five years earlier. I had given birth to Maggie only ten months before and I hadn’t run so much as a 5K in ages. But those stares were burning a hole right through my skin, and thankfully my bullheadedness kicked in.

  “All right, I’ll do it,” I said. I mean, how hard it could it be?

  On June 1, a couple of weeks later, training began. I was in Avalon, whose flat roads, wide sidewalks, and ocean views would make training runs a breeze. It was a beginner’s paradise. I printed out my couch-to-marathon training plan and set out on my first run—one mile. That was it.

  Things started to go south immediately. My heart felt like it might explode, and every breath in was a sharp stab in my side. I finished that mile, but it wasn’t pretty. How was I going to run 25.2 more of those by the last week of October?

  I had underestimated the effort that would be required for me to reach my goal. Or maybe I had overestimated myself. Either way, I didn’t dwell on it. I couldn’t allow my mind to wander down any path that might end in surrender.

  At the end of that first run, wheezing forcefully and doubled over in pain, I gave myself a little pat on the back. Good job, Ryan. You did today’s run. You’re done now. Go home, drink some water, and chill. But make damn sure you show up for tomorrow’s run.

  And that’s how it went. Every day for four and a half months. No matter how slow, ugly, or painful the run may have been, I completed it. There was no 26.2-mile run ahead of me. There was only today.

  As the proverb says, “There’s only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.”

  At the time, I believed that the Marine Corps Marathon was my elephant, and every training run a nibble. I know now that that goal actually meant something much bigger. It wasn’t simply physical and mental preparation for an athletic feat. It meant honoring my brother’s sacrifice. It meant committing to his memory and to my family to be a better version of myself tomorrow than I was today. It meant doing something tough and challenging, and choosing a healthier outlet for all the fear and outrage and sadness that was churning inside me like a tornado.

  The big, gaping hole that Travis’s death had left in my heart was yet another elephant, sitting square on my chest. And every day, one mile at a time, I took a little nip out of those elephants and thereby lessened the pain.

  Perhaps the greatest help I got in completing that summer’s training was the discovery of Travis’s iPod, which kept me company on my long runs. It had been shipped back from Iraq along with his other personal effects—letters, photos, magazines. Every morning I’d wake up, tie my shoelaces, pop in my earbuds, and think to myself, All right, DJ Travis, what do you have for me today?

  I’d be running along the water and smile to myself when Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would come on and I’d remember the time Travis and I heard them in concert in Philadelphia. Then Jewel would belt out “Who Will Save Your Soul” and jolt me out of my sweet little daydream. Of course, I thought. I chuckled when I remembered what an enormous crush Travis had on Jewel growing up.

  Training for that marathon proved to be the most disciplined effort I’d ever undertaken. It was exactly the challenge and distraction I needed. A lot of hard work, a strong commitment to my family, and an eclectic iPod playlist were all I needed that summer. I suffered a pretty good tweak to my left knee with a small tear in my meniscus on my final long run—eighteen miles—but I still felt ready to take on the Marine Corps Marathon that October.

  As the big date approached, my family and I headed to Washington, through which the marathon course runs. The night before the race, we held a dinner for our team—which by now had grown to nearly a hundred people: aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, lacrosse and wrestling buddies, fellow Marines and Naval Academy grads. All of them were participating to honor my brother.

  At dinner at a hotel, we invited a few people, including Brendan Looney, to say a few words. Brendan stood solemnly at the microphone. He started in about how Travis had been a brother to him and how he couldn’t believe he was gone.

  “He was a great friend,” Brendan said. “I’ll never forget him, and I miss him.”

  He had been choking back tears, and his voice finally broke.

  I have to get out of this room, I thought. I simply couldn’t watch this tough Navy SEAL break down as he remembered my brother. It was too much.

  I slipped out of the hotel and found myself gulping in the cold fall night air outside. My head was spinning and I couldn’t help but feel that I was learning for the first time that Travis was gone forever.

  I lit a cigarette. It had been an on-and-off habit of mine over the years, one that Travis always chastised me about. I can’t tell you how long I stood outside, inhaling deeply and focusing on nothing but blowing the smoke out of my lungs. I might have been halfway through my first cigarette or I might have been well into my fifth. But eventually, a gentle hand touched my arm.

  “I know this is a lot. And I’m sure you’re nervous,” a voice said. I turned around to see my uncle Chris, who was also my godfather and had been one of Travis’s mentors. He calmly asked—in a way that only my uncle Chris could—“Do you think a cigarette is a good idea before a twenty-six-mile run?” We both burst out laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the question.

  Through the years, I have seen many friends and colleagues challenge themselves to run a marathon. One of the things I feared most about making that commitment is that I would not be prepared.

  I see that same fear in others, too. I love to talk to people leading up to the race as they tell me they are not sure if they are eating enough protein or they don’t know how their failure to complete a few of the runs laid out in their plans will affect their performance. It is then that I like to share with them that nothing could be worse than smoking cigs less than twelve hours before the starting gun. I tell them that, if I could do that and still complete my marathon, they will more than likely be just fine. This typically calms their nerves, since most people can’t comprehend someone being stupid enough to do what I did.

  Maybe one day I’ll write a book about what not to do when marathon training. Chain smoking the night before the race would certainly make the list, but it’s not even the worst transgression I’ve committed. Fortunately for you, this isn’t a book about endurance training. It’s a book about grief, which perhaps isn’t so different. The key to navigating grief, I’ve found, is to have the courage to allow it to transform you.

  I imagine there are plenty of seasoned professionals, renowned therapists, and successful counselors who will insist I shouldn’t be advising on that, either. Maybe they’re right. Committing to a twenty-six-mile run and a brand-new lifestyle within weeks of a loved one’s death may not be a good idea. Neither is inhaling cigarette smoke before you take on the greatest physical challenge of your life.

  But as I’ve had to remind myself time and time again, we’re only human. We can take only so much. Don’t be so hard on yourself when you take one step forward and several steps back. You made it this far. You got up today and put one foot in front of the other. You completed today’s run. Go home, relax. Get ready for tomorrow’s.

  When I left that night, I was a complete mess. But when I woke up the next morning, I was a new woman. I was going to crush this run and I was not going to do it alone. I knew that, along with my aunt Susan, who had committed to running with me, Travis was going to trot effortlessly alongside me as we jammed to a mix of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Eminem. The mental image of Travis pushing me along carried me through the first eighteen miles. I was sailing. More than once, I even caught myself thinking how easy the run was.

 
; Until I hit the base of the bridge.

  I was making my way into Crystal City, Virginia, and had reached the critical point in the run that determines whether you get to finish—or not. Right around mile eighteen, a bus comes and scoops up the slow-moving stragglers so race officials can begin to reopen the roads to traffic.

  All of my training leading up to race day had been about beating that bus to the bridge. As long as I made it over the bridge, I could walk the rest of the way. It seemed easy enough in my head. What I didn’t factor in was that, once I beat the bridge and got to mile 19, I still had 7.2 miles to complete.

  At this point, the wheels had all but come off. My brain was no longer able to bully my body into behaving. My knees, my ankles, my arches—everything was rebelling. I had slowed to a walk and began a debate with myself that any distance runner knows well:

  Eighteen miles is great. You should be proud of yourself. There’s no shame in stopping here. You just lost your brother, for God’s sake. Did anyone really expect you to get this far? Call it now and leave with your dignity and joints intact.

  It was a compelling argument, and my broken-down body had nothing to offer as a rebuttal. I could almost hear those plush bus seats calling for me.

  My aunt Susan remained a positive force, telling me that we were almost done and urging me to keep going. But even her words sounded hollow. I needed to get in a different headspace.

  I made one last-ditch effort. I reached into my fanny pack and rifled through my unused power gels and energy beans until my fingers rested on the Mass card with Travis’s face on it. November 19, 1980–April 29, 2007. Twenty-six years old. I gripped it tightly and offered a silent prayer. This is it, Travis. You better freaking do something this minute or I’m letting that bus pick us up.

  The knee I had tweaked during my last training run was throbbing so forcefully that I could have sworn it had a heartbeat. I looked down just to make sure. I surveyed my left leg, and my eyes fell on the scar from that night so many years before. It was a nice reminder. Travis always came through when I needed him.

  Funny, I thought. That night he saved me by giving me a ride, and now I needed him to prevent me from getting one. The irony was enough to set my legs back in motion, ever so slowly.

  I started taking the bridge and, right at the crest, I saw my best friend, Krista, in the crowd. She was holding a sign and screaming like a madwoman alongside Lia, another of my best friends from high school. They later told me that I looked like a battered and bruised Frankenstein dragging my limp left leg behind me.

  At the time, thankfully, I was so out of touch with my body—and reality—that I didn’t care. Their cheers echoed in my ears and carried me all the way to mile twenty-four, where I received another well-timed show of support. Uncle Chris, who had finished the race nearly two hours earlier, had come back for me and Susan. He met us just two miles short of the finish line and we pushed through those last minutes silently, but together. About a hundred yards before the finish line, we came upon the final hill. At that point, it might as well have been Mount Everest. Am I going to be able to scale this thing? I asked myself.

  The Marine Corps Marathon course ends at the US Marine Corps War Memorial, a statue based on the iconic picture of six Marines struggling to raise a flagpole on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II.

  It’s an incredibly powerful sight, and when you come upon it, you feel every bit as tired and as strong as those men huddled together appear to be as they raise the American flag. I didn’t care if my leg fell off in that very moment. I was not walking up that hill.

  I hustled into a full sprint, bounded over crushed plastic cups, and passed exhausted runners. Somehow I felt that my legs were fresh. In reality, I was probably every bit the Frankenstein I had appeared to be at mile nineteen, just an hour older.

  What I actually looked like, I can’t say for sure. And I’d rather not imagine. But I pushed forward and grabbed Aunt Susan’s hand as, together, we crossed the finish line.

  Then I collapsed.

  I could not make it another step. Uncle Chris pulled me up and onto his back. He piggybacked me to the water station, to refreshments, to the meet-up spot where the rest of the team had gathered, and all the way to the metro station. I remember thinking, Holy crap, I actually finished! And I ignored the physical pain that was pulsing through my body.

  I can honestly say that I’m a different person because of that race. Pushing myself through that training and navigating the emotional strain and physical stress taught me a lot about myself and even more about grief.

  It took me years to process my brother’s death, and years more to organize my thoughts around what wisdom I could possibly gain from it. It’s only after more than a decade of reflection that I can share what I now know.

  First, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.

  Wait. Hear me out. I know this advice is usually given sarcastically, and that can be for good reason. But consider, for a moment, the wisdom in that phrase. Sometimes, naïveté is a blessing. If I had known the physical, mental, or emotional toll that the race would take on me, I wouldn’t have run it. I would have become paralyzed by fear and self-doubt, and my eyes would have remained forever fixed on that thread in the carpet.

  But fear and self-doubt often keep us from knowing our own strength. And that’s something we simply can’t risk. If I had never run that race, I would never have discovered what I was capable of achieving. Sometimes the best way to learn how to swim is to spring from the diving board and cannonball into the deep end of the pool.

  And a wet, cold shock to the system may prove to be the only thing that can wake you from a heavy bout of grief, reclusiveness, or apathy. Don’t get me wrong: There’s value in preparation. Without the structure of that couch-to-marathon training plan, and the luxury of months to train, I never would have made it.

  Preparation and training are great tools; they provide us with the confidence to dream as big as we want to. But without a healthy dose of fearless ignorance, we might never bother dreaming at all.

  Second, embrace your support system.

  Relationships are everything. Family, friends, and loved ones can get us through our darkest and saddest moments. We just need to let them. Our friends and families feed our wild ambitions and nourish our ill-conceived dreams. When we share with them some embarrassing fantasy that’s well beyond our reach, they say, “Go for it.” And if you’re lucky enough to have a family and friends like mine, they may even say, “I’m in. Let’s do it together.”

  They gently and lovingly protect us from our own self-destructive habits. They lift us up (literally) when we can’t go another step, and they cheer us on when we look like Frankenstein. With a loving support system, we can afford to be a little naive. Be bold. Be fearless. But don’t do it alone. You are human and you are one person. Allow yourself to be carried forward by those who love you.

  And finally, don’t wait.

  I beg you, please don’t wait. I had no idea how tough I was. Why did I wait until my brother was dead to find out? My only regret of that marathon in 2007 was that it didn’t take place in 2006. You know who would have loved to run and train with me? Travis. Something like that, which required focus and discipline, was far more up his alley than mine. He would have been so proud and we would have had a ball together. There are so many things I wish we could have done together. I’m not the same woman he knew when he was alive. I’m better. I’m stronger. Why did I wait for him to disappear before I became the woman I wanted to be?

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  A Few Years Out:

  A Lesson in Restraint

  Throwing myself into an arduous task that required long-term focus and discipline—and for which I was largely unprepared—proved to be a blessing for me.

  The steroid shot I had received in my knee only weeks before that marathon was a strong indicator that my body wasn’t up to the task. The hours-long adventure through Washington
on my uncle Chris’s back afterward was confirmation.

  After I finished that race, I was completely debilitated. And although I have zero regrets about the way I achieved my goal, the health professionals reading this book can breathe a sigh of relief knowing I don’t recommend that anyone treat their body the way I did mine in October 2007.

  I wish I could say that was the last time I made an impulsive decision that landed me in way over my head, but it wasn’t. Not even close. My gut has a habit of seizing opportunities and committing to goals that my brain could never dream up and that my body can only barely support. It has been a pattern for me over the years. And as with all patterns, it ends the same way. It buys me some time, and a respite from my overwhelming grief.

  But sooner or later, I have to pay for it. In the case of the marathon, I was paying for it the following day, when every cell in my body hurt and I had to relearn how to walk. But that was nothing in comparison with the emotional toll the whole process had taken—and would continue to take.

  If you’ve run a marathon—or achieved any other hard-fought goal—you know that special high that the accomplishment brings with it. Nothing tastes so sweet as the fruits of your own labor. When you land the job you’ve been relentlessly pursuing, or finally save enough money to buy that car you’ve been eyeing, you feel certain that nothing compares to that first taste of victory.

  You show up for your first day at your new position or slide behind the wheel for that very first time, and you think life can’t get any better. And what happens a week later, or maybe a month, without fail? That’s right, you forget. The joy, the feeling of achievement, that you once got from the thing—the job, the car—disappears, and life goes back to normal. You’re going to need something else to pursue if you want to feel that high again. The first lick of an ice cream cone is always the best, isn’t it? The fifteenth just can’t compare.