Eliza Fletcher

 

September 12, 2022

 

Greetings from the tribe,

 

Eliza Fletcher was my people.

She is my daughter, my sister, my wife, she is a distant cousin-in-law.  She is the perfect stranger that runs with me in the next marathon.  She is the woman I pass by in the dark winter mornings as we both train our bodies for whatever drives us.

She is a runner.  I won’t presume to know her motivation, her abilities, or her track record.  I can tell from what little I know that she was determined, dedicated, and devoted to her family, her students, and her faith.  And running. 

 I know she ran.  I know that, like many of our tribe, she found joy and solace in running, sometimes to ready herself for a marathon, sometimes to simply untwist from the demands of the rest of her full, rich life.  She slipped into the holy space we all cherish, this fragile but enduring place that waits just outside the rest of the world’s chaos.  And she ran. 

I know that in that mix of living and running someone shredded the bubble and wreaked havoc in her life. 

I know she is someone’s mother, someone’s wife, someone’s daughter, someone’s teacher.  I know she had ‘boundless, childlike energy’ and that ‘..she was not afraid to be vulnerable.’ 

What she is not, what she is not, … is to blame.

 What caught my attention after her death was the reaction of some of the public about her ‘unsafe’ or ‘reckless’ behavior. Running at four in the morning, not taking appropriate precautions, not protecting herself against what we all know can happen.

 My only reason for writing this morning is to add another voice, from a male, to say this: let’s not ask the wrong question.  I don’t want the other members of my tribe to mistake silence for assent.  There is no value in finding the victim guilty. 

 I am tempted to tell you about the other runners murdered at all hours, regardless of what they wear or where they run.  It’s heartbreakingly easy to illustrate the pervasiveness of violence.  But my purpose isn’t to win a meaningless debate.

 In truth, I had already hardened myself to this tragic story.  I didn’t want to absorb it because I’d already reached my capacity for right now, and couldn’t take on another headline about senseless killing.  I read the lede, took a shallow breath, and set it aside.

 For many of the people I know, it has become a challenge to modulate the intake of news about violence.  You have to filter some of it or it threatens to swamp you.  So, you find yourself choosing what to become incensed about.  For some of us, it’s driven by race or gender, for others politics, and others only read stories that feature mass shooting deaths.  That’s the bar.

 When you wade into these parts of your life, you are led to questions about the human condition, and the answers, the solutions, are not coming.  So we ask other questions that maybe are easier.

 Whose fault was this?  Who should have seen this coming?  What should the authorities have done?  What should society do? Is it drugs, racism, parenting, society, right-wing/left-wing ideology?  Is it the street light companies?  The gun manufacturers?  Is it police response times?   How can this be stopped?  Wait, is it the victim, is that who is to blame?

 None of this conversation brings back the murdered, repairs the trauma, or prevents it from happening.  It’s just what we do while we let out our shallow breath.  It’s what we do while we wait for it to happen again.

 Except for today some of us are tearing off a piece of our collective anesthetic, just for this moment, and exposing this one simple truth.  The answer is not going to be to convict the victim. 

 I’m not naïve.  I know well enough to take the lessons the world offers in random violence and  I want my family and friends, and all of the people in my tribe, to be safe.  And if for today it means behaving differently, adapting, so that we can do what we choose while we live in a dangerous world, then we will do that.

 A member of our tribe is gone.  The reasons are tragic, the wake of her loss is enormous, and felt in pools of people who would otherwise never have known Eliza.  We mourn for her and for the pain her family is immersed in.  And each of us had the same thought about what we can do now, what we can do tomorrow and for all of the tomorrows left to us.  We can run.  For Eliza.

 Before I go, I want to share some words from another time when tragedy seared our tribe, because I feel it call to me, feel the spirit of who we are, resisting the terror of what would lessen us.  From April, 2013:

 We run to testify, and to push those around us, running with us, standing watching us, to do the same.  To say: we commit to be the best we can for ourselves and for each other.

 We run to test ourselves.  To improve.  To inspire.  To remember.  To represent.  To compete.  We run not to be separate from the world but to bring the world with us.  To testify.  To give witness that even in this simple act we can be as one people.  We can rise above the gray dimness that threatens humanity and hold the light high, for ourselves and for those who would run with us.  

There is not enough world to hold us back.  Not enough violence or disdain or hate or ridicule or fear or cynicism or doubt.  We will run again, not because we are elite or different or special, but because we are meant to run, as humans, as companions.  We are meant to express ourselves in this way.  I believe it.

 In Hopkinton, 26.2 miles from Boston, behind the blue and gold starting line, with its iconic unicorn, we wait. There is a moment before the big gun goes off, when the anticipation is palpable, and you can feel tens of thousands of people lean forward, eager for the first step.  And you look into the eyes of the runner next to you, and you see the miles and the pain and the time and the tears and the failure and the challenge and beginning again and failing and never ever giving up.  It is the human condition, the spirit that keeps us from giving in to what would make us less than what we are meant for.  And then we take the first step, and run with all we have into the space the world has made. 

 We will run again.

  

Hope this finds you running free,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith