A Blaze of Glory

I don't want to write this blog entry. I have been fighting doing this with every ounce of my being, and every alarm in my head says, "don't write it." I feel like I've finally come to that inevitable cross-road that every writer faces the piece you write could either go over very well, or could ruin you for changing your style and tone. But I write about what I know, and I know my life, and this event has been plaguing my mind now for two weeks, and I simply can't avoid it or push it out of my mind any longer. So, all I can say is....after Thanksgiving, I promise I will have plenty of material to write something funny. But for now, I have to get this out; and with getting it out, hopefully I can let it go.

On Saturday, November 1 2008, Fred Costa started to run the New York City Marathon. I had trained with Fred on TEAM in Training in the Spring for the Flying Pig Marathon, and had seen him every Wednesday and Saturday for our team runs, and for all the little socials in between. Fred was not a sprinter and did not appear to be a fanatic about running - but he was a solid, steady-paced locomotive that always got the job done. A little shy and usually only speaking when spoken to, the Fred I came to know during training was relatively quiet and introverted, and I never really got the opportunity to learn much about his life beyond the brutality the pavement dished out into our ankles. But he was always pleasant, kind, courteous, and was that face who was at every event.

So having known Fred for only five months, but for five of the most physically and emotionally exhausting months of my life, I know that Fred was more than prepared to take on another marathon. He had finished his 2008 Pig and was looking for seconds, and had completed a number of other marathons and mini-marathons. Fred knew what he was doing - I'm sure his body was in excellent condition, he was well-hydrated, had the right sugars and carbohydrates in his body for breaking down, and was limber and alert.

The problem is, Fred did not finish the New York City Marathon.

The last time I ever saw Fred was at the Hyde Park Reggae Run this fall, and I think I may have even accidentally introduced him as Frank (this has plagued my conscience ever since). He sent an email in late October inviting everyone to sign up for a run through Kentucky in the fall of 2009 called the Bourbon Chase, and sounded really excited about it. The next time I heard "Fred Costa", it came in a late night voicemail on November 3 with a shaken voice from an alumni of the winter team. All the message explained is that Fred had suffered a heart attack during the marathon, and was now in a hospital in New York. That was all.

I have fallen out of touch with most of the 2008 Flying Pig Team - I went one way, and the rest went another - as the Pig was merely an experiment for me, but a hobby for many. I assumed the team probably already knew about all this, and that I was simply out of the communication loop - so when I emailed the team listserv to get details on how to send a card and/or flowers, I was more than amazed at the overwhelming response that most people had not even heard about Fred's fall.

On November 4, I opened an email from my ex (which had me sweating a little bit to begin with), and she had found more information from one of the head officers at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Fred collapsed at mile 22 of the NYC marathon, and had stopped the beating of his heart along with the breathe of his lungs. They used a defibrillator on him twice, and were rather sure it was due to a heart attack. He was now in an induced coma in the hospital. Those who had been training with him and had accompanied him to NYC had flown home, as his three sisters had flown in to take care of him.

That afternoon, one of our chief trainers from the season sent out an email noting the article in Runners World titled Grave Concerns, Are Marathons Dangerous? We were answered the next day with an email from one of Fred's sisters, who explained that, "Fred was unsedated for
part of the day and Susan thinks it's possible that he was sticking his tongue out at her on command." To lighten the mood, the sister reported that they were sharing the hospital room with Kevin Bacon, and had been receiving many nice cards and flowers.

One week after Fred's heart-attack, we received more information that set up a system for us to email words of encouragement that would be read to Fred, hoping his hearing was still active. In addition, we created the "Fred Fund", that collected money to send to Fred's sisters to help them with food and accommodations while they stayed in New York at Fred's side. A member of the team had flown out to visit with Fred, and delivered this report:

"Fred looked good throughout the race on Sunday. His sisters actually have pictures of his race per the race photographers, and they are going to forward those on soon. They said the pictures are great, good old Fred having a great day for cameras! Shortly after mile 22, Fred collapsed. The thinking is cardiac arrest (heart attack), however this is not confirmed. Two runners from London were near him, and actually EMTs, they started CPR immediately which was a definite positive. Fred was transported to the hospital where within 3 hours of his collapse, they did a procedure to take his body temperature down to reduce oxygen depletion damage to his brain. This was a positive, not many hospitals can complete this procedure, and the fact that Fred was able to have this procedure done within 3 hours of his collapse was good (normally suggestion is to start the procedure within 6 hours).

The week has been a tough one for Fred, as he has had many seizures, and right now the concern is more of the unknown than the known. The main concern is the state Fred will be in when he wakes up from the coma (he is in a drug induced coma until Monday), and if there has been damage to his brain due to oxygen depletion. From what I am aware, brain damage is the first concern (top priority), and heart issues are the second concern."

In the week following, members from Fleet Feet and TEAM in Training organized a run in Fred's honor in Blue Ash out of Fleet Feet for Saturday, November 15. The small 5k run/walk was to help offset the medical bills his family would incur. From that flyer, I feel the most important aspect is this:

"Fred is 41 years old and has been a dedicated runner for years. He has trained with Team in Training, given countless hours of his time to help others train, to raise funds for local charities and to volunteer at local events. Fred was the person that was always at everything, always willing to help and always ready to lend his support.
Fred's quiet, unassuming manner and generous heart have touched so many people. It is so very hard to imagine life without him."

On Wednesday, November 12 at 1:37 in the afternoon, the email went out that Fred's family had decided to remove him from life-support. Fred would pass away later that night, and have 17 of his top-condition organs donated so that others may live. Even in death, Fred fought for others.

With his passing, the running community erupted. That is something I will always attest to, something I have never seen in any fraternity, club, class, or even many families: the willingness to sacrifice, the ability to give heart and soul, to contribute SO much time and effort, for even just one person. It is a community like no other on this planet. Emails began to soar around with well wishes, prayers, lamentations, feelings of guilt (Fred often told people on the TEAM that he thought of them when he was tired on a long run, and that kept him going - those members felt a twinge of guilt as a motivator that kept Fred going on that day), and plans to make Fred's life everlasting.

Donation centers popped up all over Cincinnati (Fit4You in Loveland, as an example), and people rallied in every way possible to support the memory of Fred and his family. The running community decided not to run a 5k, but to run four miles - the distance Fred had left to complete before the finish line. They would finish the race for Fred - he would run his New York Marathon.

There were hundreds of runners who showed up on the drizzly, cold morning at Fleet Feet in Fred's honor. His picture was everywhere, and our purple TEAM jerseys were worn by every other person as a tribute to him. Beautifully kind speeches were said about him, and radio, news, and newspaper all were in-toe (I had used my own connection to get some vans there, and Fox19 asked me for a quote - which I was not only hesitant to do, since I didn't know Fred very well, but I didn't even know the camera was on!). I could not do the run myself, as I had been called into work that morning to handle media; but my friends and girlfriend, who had never met anyone from the team, all came at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday to run in the rain in his honor. Even my parents, who had never met Fred, gave money to his fund. The run will become an annual fundraising event in Fred's memory for the school where he was a physical education teacher.

The obituary appeared in the paper on November 19. Fred's visitation occurred later that afternoon in Mt. Lookout, and I would go alone. I couldn't get out of work (nor for the funeral the next day), and had rehearsal for a show that evening, so I would miss most of the TEAM arriving to pay their respects. Plain and simple - there is nothing positive about going to a funeral home alone: I knew no family members when I arrived, none of them knew me, and I certainly felt out of place - once again, only having been part of Fred's 60-person team for five months, and never actually knowing him. But ~five familiar faces from the TEAM were present, including the man who helped me cross the finish line back in May, and we were able to talk about Fred together. As I worked my way through the line to give my well-wishes to the unfamiliar family, one of his sisters stopped me to thank me for my kind words said in my television interview, that they would be quoted in Fred's Eulogy. I earnestly asked her not to, as I already felt uncomfortable being a limited connection to Fred - but she was insistent. So apparently, "Fred will finish this race with us today, just not in his shoes" was a resounding quote. His funeral was the following day. As an echo, TEAM members running in the Thanksgiving Day Race tomorrow morning will wear his image and their purple TEAM jerseys, and he will continue to live on.

I don't handle death well, I never have. But on the compromise, I highly doubt you can find many people that say, "I handle death excellently!" I find our ceremonies of honoring the dead awkward and off-putting, everyone dressed in their finest, the body on display, flowers and images all around - it's sad, and distant, and every time I see a body in the casket, my mind plays tricks on me that it should blink any second or just breathed. I never have any idea what to say, and always come off cliche, short, and painfully awkward. Fred has been a strange whirlwind of thought, as I didn't really know HIM, just knew him in the context of running for five months, and now he is gone. He's not a person I see every day, so nothing in my daily line-up has changed. We never spoke or emailed outside of training, so there are no conversations, or even a relationship really, that has been severed. But for some reason, my heart still sinks at the thought of what happened.

Should I have been more outgoing? Should I have tried to be his friend (despite he's double-my age), should should should. But it happened, and shoulds are as useful as a knife in an ice-cream factory. I had lunch with a TEAM friend yesterday, and mulled over the fact that I can never decide what's worse - to slowly fade away in constant pain after a long life, or to go out in a blaze of glory at a young age. I am still not reconciled on the fact, and may never be. What I do know is that Fred gave of himself consistently - he was a teacher, and he ran a number of races just to benefit others and charities. You can accomplish much in silence - you need not always be the loudest voice in the room.

Thanksgiving is a time to be with your loved ones, as we all know too well, and are told often. No matter how annoying your little brother is, no matter how dumb your sister's fiance is, or how oblivious and meek your grandmother may have become, express all the love you can. In a brightly starred sky, blazes of glory happen all the time.

Fred at mile 22 of the 2008 New York City Marathon, shortly before his collapse

Never Grow Up

J.M. Barrie had something when he wrote Pan's infamous line, "never grow up". There's a hidden message there, something about the rejuvenating factor of never losing your youth - what it can do for your soul to stay forever young, forever curious, and to always look at the world without straight edges - but more wobbly walls, like Seuss's houses.

To promote my second-favorite holiday (get ready Christmas....) of All Hallow's Eve, Chipotle offered free burritos to anyone who wore foil into any of their establishments. Being that my coworkers and I all work in non-for-profit, we still very-much-so have the college-kid mentality of "I don't care if it's been dragged through mud and is laying on the sidewalk - if it's free, I want it". So we organized an adventure and rolls of foil, and trekked off to Chipotle for our Halloween dinner.

Obviously, the line was out the door. Adorned with our various foil ties, hats, glasses, and nose-rings, we found ourselves surrounded by an ocean of starving high-school kids.....who apparently have an equal income as 20 & 30-something non-for-profit adults. Awesome. But, with our fantastic complexion and relatively short stature, we blended right in. And I'm sure all the kids oogled over what fantastic Oxy-pad we must all be using to cleanse away our acne....

The line moved relatively quickly; and just as the ad had announced, we were able to pick any item on the menu and get it for free. Just to augment the point that we were poor, most of us got water. However, I couldn't help but take Dr. Pepper once out of eye-shot of the cash register. Seriously? If I go to hell for stealing freaking pop in a tiny paper cup instead of water, then heaven is far too picky - and I will be partying with all the other carbonated culprits in my fiery coke-laden eternity.

We devoured our free burritos - free food tastes amazing, by the way. Did we remove our outfits to eat? No - we proudly wore our uniforms of costless culinary delights as babies and children looked on in shiny, ADHD wonder. We had to chuckle at some of the STARVING and growing high school boys around us, who talked of the "Chipotle Tour" they were doing around Cincinnati; or, for the more creative and with less gas money (which, for the record people, "creative" OFTEN equals "poor"), were combining their foil, rearranging it to create new foil costumes, and going BACK up to the register for a second burrito under a new guise. I don't know what's in High School lunches these days, but sloppy joes and tatter tots just aren't cutting it.

We strolled out of Chipotle with our bellies full of burritoey goodness, and with the majority of our costumes now crumpled up into balls (except for my bow-tie.....which now made me the chip-n-dale's dancer of Mexican food). When we got into my car and started to pull out of the lot, the strangest scene was going on at the far end of the lot near the exit. There were four high-school age kids all dressed in white from head to foot (part of some costume), just "hangin' out". Two guys were standing about 40 feet from each other tossing a football back and forth, while the third guy was leaned up against the back of his parents' hand-me-down car with his girlfriend straddling his leg in a "romantic" embrace.

We couldn't help but gawk, because it was just so strange. Who goes and "hangs out" in the Chiptole parking lot, let alone hang out and MAKE OUT?! I mean, seriously?

As we slowly cruised by (so the football tossers had time to get out of the way), the couple went in for a smooch, and all five of us just broke out in a big "ewwwwwwwww!" This, inevitably, led to fantastic laughter that made driving the car very difficult. The simple fact that all five of us (mid-20s to early 30s) all reacted in the same 6-year-old tone to a kiss was absolutely hysterical. As we slowly drove away, someone in the backseat, through fits of laughter, said "we should drive around and do it again with the windows down." Brilliant ideas have been had throughout time: Ghandi decided not to eat, Caesar moved northwest, Buddy Holly wore black-rimmed glasses; but at that moment, no idea in history even compared.

We circled the block and headed back towards to kids, who oddly were looking a lot like the Clockwork Orange team without their bowlers. As we approached, we slowly put the windows down, and as the kids watched us pass by, in a wonderful forte chorus, we all yelled "EEEEEWWWWWW" and drove off out of the Chiptole parking lot. The five of us laughed from the Buttermilk Pike exit all the way back to Covington, non-stop. And not just giggling and chuckling - tearful, stomach-aching laughter. Soul-healing laughter. The kind of laughter you had when your older brother pinned you as a child and tickled you, to the point where you had to scream "Stop it! Stop it! I can't breathe!" and your were redder than a radish. Yeah, it was that good. Cigarette-afterward good.

What I loved imagining was the story in the locker-room on Monday, when the kid getting his "mack" on would recount what happened in the Chipotle parking lot.

*Scene: Smith High School boys locker room. Boys are milling about in towels and football practice gear, chatting and telling jokes.

(please, I beg you, when you read these lines, use your best, low, football jock voice in your head)

Mike: "Yeah doods, so get this. I was in the Chipotle parking lot on Saturday hangin' out with Stevie and Ross."

Stevie & Ross: "Yeah doods, yeah, he totally was there."

Mike: "Yeah, right, I was totally there. And Sara was grindin' on my thigh, like usual. You guys know, dats like, what we do on Saturday. Everybody knows dat."

Stevie: "Yeah, and Ross and I like, throw the ball. Dats our thing man. We throw, he gets it on with Sara. Dammit we're cool"

Mike: "So freakin' cool."

Ross: "So cool."

Mike: "So she was grindin' my leg, and it was awesome. And then dis car drives by, with these like, old people in it wearing foil. And they all like, make this weird face like they smelled somethin' bad or somethin', and then they drove off."

Curious boy #1: "Dey just drove off? Dude, what'd they smell?"

Mike: "Dude! They didn't smell anything, they just made the face. Jesus, listen to my story!"

Ross & Steve: "Yeah dood, just listen to his story!"

Curious boy #1: "Sorry dood......dammit you're cool."

Mike: "I know. So anyway, Sara's on my leg and the freaks drive by. Ross and Stevie start rockin' the pig skin.........guys! We are SO gonna whoop Marty High next weekend, they freakin' have no idea how much we're gonna own them. Holy CRAP we're awesome."

Locker Room: "Boo yah! Smith High rocks!"

Mike: "Totally sweet. So Sara, thigh, driveby, got it? So, she goes back to ya know, doin her thing on my leg, and den this car comes back again, and I'm like 'Stevie, Ross, what's that car?'"

Stevie & Ross: "That's totally what he said."

Mike: "Right, that's what I said. And they didn't know. And this car pulls by us, and its those old people again, and they all yell "eeeeewwww" like some little baby freaks or somethin, and then drive off!"

Audience: "What? No way? What the crap? Crazy? Damn we're so cool....."

Curious Boy #1: "So then what happened?"

Mike: "So what happened? I mean, Sara was all in this funk and was like "this is so weird" and like, got off my thigh 'n' stuff. Dude, I didn't get ANY on Halloween night -Sara was all weirded out and embarrassed 'n' stuff. I mean like nothin', no up the shirt or anything! I was so pissed! Doods, I spent like, twenty dollars on that freakin' Mentos costume with her so she'd get all cool after the party 'n' whatever - but those foil freaks screwed everything up! Dood.......if we "just snuggle" one more time, I swear to god man, it's over."

Audience: "Yeah! Forget her! Snuggling's for losers! I like mentos......"

Mike: "Doods. I freakin' hate Halloween. We're so done with that holiday. I'll see you doods at Chipotle on Saturday....bring the football."

Sigh, or at least that's how it was in my head. Be ridiculous, be silly, and laugh til you cry. That's the only wisdom I have for you this week.