On the Saturday morning before the Sunday (Nov 5) he passed away, Gary struggled to open his eyes.  His breathing was a bit irregular.  When I was able to rouse him, he blinked his eyes open and smiled.  I looked into those soft brown eyes which had sunken so far back in their sockets and could tell he wanted to say something to me. “Honey”, he said, “It’s over.  I’m done.” I managed to smile back and say, “Yes, for sure.  I understand and it’s OK.”  I went out to the kitchen to get his milk (which he looked so forward to) and his first round of meds for the day and when I came back to the room, he was much more alert and was eager for those first sips of milk, the only food he’d eaten since the middle of September.  After I gave him his meds and he swallowed the last of the milk, he took my hands in his and said, “We did it!  We made it to Atlantic City!”  I got so choked up and I think I made some ridiculous comment like “Yay Us.”  

For those of you who don’t know, Atlantic City was the finish line for the 1986 Race Across America (RAAM) the year he finished 5th place, in 10 days 9 hours, having started at the Santa Monica Pier in California.  A huge huge accomplishment. I’ve renamed RAAM “The Race that Taught Him Everything” because it gave him lessons in stamina, perseverance, and tenacity that helped him get through so many challenges in life but mostly helped him endure these last 6 months without utterly crushing his spirit.  It also taught him to know when the race was over.

Through the years many of us have been entertained by his amazing stories but to me, his stories about RAAM were among the very best.  Stories about how combines in the fields became dinosaurs in his delirious mind, and how being chased by a pack of wild dogs bent on destroying him only made him pedal faster, the icicles that formed on his nose and eyebrows as he descended the freezing Rockies at night, becoming clairvoyant in the Blue Ridge Mountains and so on.  One of the things he liked to point out was that at the beginning of the race there were about a hundred eager riders all with the perfect gear and their crews. Family and friends gathered to cheer them on.  The starting gun fired, and off they went.  By the eastern most border of California only about 40 cyclists remained and as the race wore on through Arizona, Nevada and so on, the numbers dwindled significantly .  Eventually there were only 7 official finalists that year.  “The race belongs to the finishers, not the starters” he would say.  

I’ve thought a lot about “finishing well” these days.  In life it seems we get so preoccupied with the start (making good impressions and all) and the middle where we become hypnotized into believing that the perfect job, the perfect body, the perfect house, car and social circle, are the most important things.  But really, isn’t it the last part of the race where we really need to dig in and “hammer on to the finish” as our friend Don O’Neill likes to say?  I’ll admit to not knowing how that looks in a broad general sense, but for me, for us, it meant that we treated each of Gary’s last days as an opportunity to show our love, laugh as much as we could,  not give in to the victim mentality or complain needlessly, but to carry on with as much honor and dignity as we could muster, because we had witnesses who were watching and just maybe we could be an encouragement to our kids and our friends that all is not lost when we face death.  It’s just the finish line.  And then we get the prize. 

I would like to thank you all for reading these journal entries and for all the loving comments and words of encouragement.  I also want to personally thank you for all the prayers and love being sent my way as I head out into a brand new role and the way of our kids living out their days without their dad.  We’re a little shaky to be sure.