I’ve been locked into my routine the past week and a half. Every day is basically a variation of the one before it broken up by the days when I have my kids with me at the house and long weekends when they aren’t here. Workouts have been happening 5 days a week, runs 7 days a week and I’m getting back to where I feel strong and solid. At least that is the plan. And then the call.

A little backstory here is appropriate. When I started teaching on the campus I’ve been at my whole teaching career, one of my assistant principals was also a runner. He worked on the campus for a few years and then moved around a bit and ended up back on my campus two years ago as the principal. His wife works with the dog running group that grew out of our club a few years ago and got to know John through that group. So yesterday afternoon and I’m sitting with my kids wrapping up the day, getting ready to check my son’s schoolwork that he swears he’s been doing the last few days (he wasn’t…more on that later) and I get a phone call. It wasn’t a number I recognized, it was a blocked number and I just let it go to voicemail because that’s what I do with calls I don’t recognize. I waited the customary 45 seconds and checked my messages. It was my principal asking me to give him a call.

Earlier in the day, my friend Conor who just got back into running a month or so ago texted me to check in and let me know that a runner had been found collapsed over by where he works, asked if I’d heard anything. I hadn’t but knowing a bunch of local runners is a byproduct of being involved in the running community for 7 years and so the odds that I knew the runner were better than none. We messaged back and forth for a bit and I didn’t really think much beyond that.

I called my principal back and he asked me what I was up to. Not unheard of, I thought this was still a work related call. It wasn’t. It was a call I didn’t want to take. It turns out that the runner who had been found out on the side of the road was not only a member of the club but a member of the club who everyone knows, an older man who had just beaten prostate cancer and retired to his new Jeep and rescue dog. I didn’t get details but it sounds like he collapsed on a run and that was it. The end.

I got off the phone with my friend and picked up the chain where he left it off. I called my buddy Ben and broke the news, we made a plan to reach out to the people we knew were friends with John and I got off the phone with him. Thing is, I don’t know how to break this kind of news to people, especially people I care about. I called Audrey, I called Heather and then tried to reach a few more people before we posted news in the group. Making those calls felt like I was responsible for what happened. I was bringing the news and the hurt and shock that came with John’s passing to people I’ve invested years of good and bad times and it was my responsibility to bring that to them.

Obviously I wasn’t responsible for any of it, I know that.

The risk of opening up to people and communities, of living in a way that doesn’t hold back and of pushing beyond limits of endurance, mental and physical, is that when something happens you can’t control or can’t grind through there aren’t ways to cope. I went for a run this afternoon after the kids got picked up and I felt the stress of the last couple of days settle deeper rather than slough off like it does most of the time. Deep aching for the loss of a friend and member of our little community on a body level. I called the run shorter than I had planned initially and headed home knowing that this is what waited for me. An empty house, which is ok.

I won’t pretend to have been best friends with John, we were more than acquaintances and had spent Christmas Day at Denise’s house as the holiday orphans. I think what really landed yesterday was the deep sense of loss that everyone I talked to, people that knew John, felt with the shock of his passing. The impact that he had on our community was deep, the roots grew out all over and I guess the best way I can think about it is that the roots are gone and in their place is a void. The void will fill and we will remember, of course, through the ways that we memorialize members of our community through stories and memories and shots poured and miles run.

The biggest story that I have of John is the time that Ramjack and Heather and I blew past John at the Cowtown Marathon and Heather got a picture. That picture, of Ramjack and I passing John became one of the sources of a long running rivalry (all in jest…maybe not all) between the Johns. The last time that I ran with John and the Sunday crew, before the shutdown, I passed John as many times as I could on the run and made sure he knew how many. I don’t think he would have had it any other way.

We will keep running in your memory and I can only hope that when my time comes, my people remember me with as much love as we remember you. Rest easy John.