I started writing this on 9/19/08.
I’ve never understood it when someone dies and we say they were “lost.” There is much I don’t understand and likely never will. But still I ask the questions. I lost a dear friend this week. Barbara Warren. She was phenomenal. As a friend, a mentor, my ‘mother’. In those times I stopped believing there is a god, when I thought of Barbara, when I talked to Barbara, when I was in her company, I believed in a god again because she was truly a gift. One of those people you simply can not believe you have the incredibly great fortune to have in your life. Even those who only met her in passing at an athletic event and were not close friends with her would will tell you how fortunate they feel to have met her, even if only briefly. It is rare in our lifetimes that we get to experience what I call a state of ‘grace.’ Those times when we have ease of heart and feel the passion of life to its top. When I was in Barbara’s company, I always felt that state of grace, or at least a pipeline to it. It was her. She was so incredibly kind, and generous with her heart and her courage and her faith. She believed in me at times when I no longer did and helped bring me back to that faith in myself I had become so disconnected from. She would tear up when we talked about my own mother, the neglect and abuse I experienced, telling me she felt like a mother to me, and it was the first time I had experienced that, a mother’s love. I would not have known about my chosen sport (ultrarunning) were it not for Barbara. She handed me an entry form for a 50 mile race one fall afternoon and told me, “You’re going to do this with me next year!” I had never run/raced over a half-marathon distance on the roads and yet, I readily agreed. And so my world expanded both literally and figuratively. Which is what she was about. Expanding your world, pushing beyond the self-imposed limits we set to stay in our comfort zone.
I began writing this on August 29th. I had to stop, take a break for a few days. It is Sept 10th now, two weeks since she left us and still I cry at times because I miss her terribly. Because I think of her sister and her daughters and Tom. I celebrate her every day when I run. But I miss her terribly. I celebrate her when I curl up with my dogs at night, as she was so loving.
I remember one time when I went out to her house in the mountains east of San Diego for a training run with her and Angelika and Angelika’s son and others. It was the first time I had been out to the house which Tom had built. It overlooks Lake Cuyamaca. It is beautiful and peaceful. We were out all day. At that time, there had been a rash of aggressive mountain lions in the area. While we were out on our run, I still laugh to this day because Barbara piped up and said, “Put Cooper in front, she is the smallest, we will use her as bait!” And everyone laughed. As did I. I was new to ultrarunning and still felt out of my element and by far out of my ‘league’ to be running with Barbara and Angelika and the others. But, despite their incredible athletic ability and talent, when I ran with them, they made you feel as if you are their peer.
Barbara lived everything. Expansively. With love. With kindness.
It’s been over a year. I still miss her terribly at times. Other times, I simply feel she is with me, keeping me strong and directed. Which is good, because it is worse when I feel as if she is ‘gone’–and really, she is not.
