This picture was taken just before Thanksgiving 2007. Dylan titled the picture “Risa&Me.” This would have been a selfie, before there was selfie.

Sometimes we would do things together as a family, and then afterwards say, “That was fun and different. We should do that again.” One such time was for Thanksgiving in 2007. Donna and I ran the 10k Dana Point Turkey Trot. Since the race started at 7:00am, we ignorantly decided to drive across Los Angeles and Orange County after work on the day before Thanksgiving to stay in a hotel close to the starting line. It took us over three hours to get there.

Donna and I got up and left for the race. Dylan and Marisa were left in the hotel room with clear instructions not to open the door for anybody. They locked the door from inside and we left a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. We were only gone for, at most, a couple hours, but Marisa still mentions how much they had fun in that room watching TV and being kids.

Later, we spent some time driving around town, trying find someplace to have Thanksgiving dinner. We didn’t really have a plan, and this was another reason we thought we would like do it again. Next time, we would have a little better plan. I don’t remember what we ended up eating for Thanksgiving that year, but it might have been pizza.

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We made it through Thanksgiving this year, as much as we really didn’t want to. We did something different again. Different for us, yet very traditional. We had a lot of family at our house. We had never done this before, but Donna and I thought it might it easier. I am pretty sure it did make it easier, and I am grateful that everybody came. I missed the competition with Dylan over the mashed potatoes. Unfortunately, this year I know there will be some leftover for me. Usually Dylan would finish them before I got a chance.

For quite a few years, we tried to take a moment to recognize what we were thankful for before we ate. Sometimes, we mostly joked around about it, but we always tried impress on Dylan and Marisa how very fortunate we have been. Most importantly, we told Dylan and Marisa how very thankful Donna and I were to have two beautiful, healthy and intelligent children. Now, I know that I can spin what has happened to Dylan in any number of ways to say something postive, but that doesn’t change my feeling like I have less to be thankful for this year.

Thank you to the family, including Thalia, for being there with us for Thanksgiving. You helped to make a difficult day less difficult.

I found myself a bit down a couple weeks ago, while listening to the Flaming Lips song by song cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which I like a lot. I didn’t really put it together until I realized some of my favorite parts of the album. Miley Cyrus’ baked, smokey verses in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, as well as her part in the bridge of “A Day in the Life.” It took me a number of times listening to the album before the “coincidences” hit me again. It really occurred to me when my phone just decided to play something random, and it was the Lifehouse song in my Dylan play list instead of the Flaming Lips album.

Why did it take me so long to make the connections? Ugh. Dylan played the entire album on guitar. He was sweet on Miley Cyrus, years ago. Lifehouse was just the hammer to my head to make it more obvious.

I have referred to it as slipping when trying to describe it to Donna and others. I don’t want him to slip from my mind. I don’t want the memories to slip from my memory. I want them to remain pure. Real. Honest. And I fear they won’t, or have already been muddied. I fear they can’t and are slipping away into the fog of my past.

Update: It has been driving me crazy that there are a couple inaccuracies in this post that I need to correct. While the intersection at Copper Hill and Copperstone is and will always be a crucial part of our lives, it is not technically the place where Dylan was last alive. It is the last place that he was as we have known him. I should have been more careful in my statements, because I am grateful to all of the people that were there for Dylan. Including all of the emergency workers that were able to keep him alive long enough, so that I could be there for Donna and Marisa when Dylan did eventually slip away from us. I have put the words “breathing” and “alive” in quotes, because I have been unable to come up with a more appropriate way of conveying my point.

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After a disappointing result in last years Santa Clarita 5k, I determined that I was going to do the half marathon if it meant that I had to crawl across the finish line. I figured I would run as far as I could, and then walk the rest. Then, my life changed.

After we planted the tree in Heritage Park, it became my objective to get there once a week as part of my workout. Perhaps, it was my attempt at mourning, but it became much more. I started doing this on March 16th. I would run 5 minutes, then walk 5 minutes over and over until I got there. Then, I would return using the same routine. It had nothing to do with the goal of running 13 miles. It had to do with dealing with loss and mourning, I think. Something happened along the way, and I pushed myself a little more to get to the park. Then, I only walked one time for five minutes, before getting to the park.

After that, I ran the nearly four miles from the spot where Dylan was last “breathing” to the tree in Heritage Park we planted in our own little private memorial. I listened to songs — so many songs, I got emotional. I cried a few times as I approached either of the two endpoints of my path. I got angry. Really angry. I thought a lot about Dylan.

One Augustines lyric that stuck out many of those times, so fittingly described what all of us felt early in our mourning:

YOU FEEL SEE THROUGH
LIKE EVERYONE SEES YOUR HEART
IS BLOWN APART, THAT IT’S CRIPPLED
AND CRACKED AND HAD ENOUGH..

I must have listened to that a hundred times while I was huffing and puffing my way though another mile.

I would mention the marathon, yet avoid committing to it. I didn’t really feel up to it. I couldn’t get over the mental hurdle. Personal achievement was of no interest. Nothing really changed as far as my routine, until, as uncertain as ever, I registered for the half marathon on September 16th.

On Sunday September 21, I ran for a little over 5 miles. It was the first time, I had run along a stretch of road I mentioned in another post (Panic At The Disco). It struck me. I wanted my next goal to be to make it back to Heritage Park. I had no idea how far it was. I just knew it was my next goal. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was probably when my thoughts of Dylan and landmarks of his life in our neighborhood became an inspiration instead of a memorial. It took me two or three weeks to get back to Heritage Park only to realize how much further I would have to go to get to the finish line in November.

I knew that the goal that would put me over top would be making it all the way back to the intersection of Copper Hill and Copperstone. The place where Dylan was last “alive.”

It took me another three weeks to reach that goal, but I did. The next weekend, I ran past that crucial intersection, and found myself lost. I had no idea what to do to get the last two miles in to reach 13.1. I basically ran around the block and realized that the hill was too steep for me to do that twice in end of the longest run of my life, so I just started running back down hill thinking of the pain in my legs. Not recognizing how the pain of what had happened to Dylan had caused me to pursue an objective that would cause me so much pain then. I did it, and I stopped RunKeeper on exactly 13.10. And then faced myself with the journey of hiking up the high hill I just ran down on wobbly weak legs to get myself home.

The following week I thought about a lot of things, but I really thought about some way to pay tribute to Dylan while I was running. A number of ideas passed through my head. One phrase was consistent: “I’m Thinking of Dylan Zimmerman.” The key word in the Augustines lyric is “feel.” I have felt “see through” during these last few months, but I am not “see though.” I felt I wanted the world to know that I had been thinking of my son while I was training, preparing and ultimately achieving this objective. It would not have otherwise been possible. In the end, I did nothing because I didn’t want to let him down if I failed. Instead, I have posted my experience here for all the world to see if they so chose.