Basket
“You should go
from place to place
recovering the poems
that have been written for you,
to which you can affix your signature.
Don’t discuss these matters
with anyone.
Retrieve. Retrieve.When the basket is full
someone will appear
to whom you can present it.”
from Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing
This morning as I was groggily driving to get my car serviced, only a few sips into my morning coffee, I glanced over to make eye contact with a handsome, square-jawed young man who was merging into my lane. The Beatles song, Blackbird, was playing and I looked into this man’s eyes the way you do sometimes with strangers, and thought, “It’s Ryan Shay. He’s not dead. He’s alive and driving on I-40.” But, of course, he is dead. I was there, in New York, at the Olympic Trials – coaching from my Central Park northern post in Harlem; I participated in the terrifying game of telephone as fans up and down the race course passed the message that someone went down at mile 5, that an ambulance has whisked away one of our own. None of us in our intimate, extended running family wanted to believe it. This can’t have happened, not to someone as strong and brave and all-American as Ryan Shay. Ryan was our everyman, our steadfast soldier , the midwesterner with the big heart (oh, God, I realize how sad that is) whose workload and ability to take pain was as fabled as a Paul Bunyan tall tale.
I met Ryan Shay only once. I was in Morocco on my last world cross-country team and he was on his first. This college freshman may have been baby-faced, but he was no boy. He ran like a man. Feminists like me shouldn’t say things like, “He ran like a man,” (or “throws like a girl”- ugh!), but there was something about the way Shay carried himself that was different from the other boys.
I didn’t learn of his 140-mile training weeks at altitude until after his death. I didn’t know he believed this marathon trials was his last chance to make an Olympic team. So, when I read all about this everyman hero who burst his heart in effort, I – like so many runners throughout the world – became obsessed with “Why?!” Like Shay’s father, who demanded an autopsy to dispel any rumors of performance-enhancing drug use, I felt an urgency to uncover the truth. I spent countless hours Googling and reading stories on LetsRun. I tried to read between the lines when they spoke of “enlarged heart” and “adrenal fatigue;” was this code for EPO and HGH? I didn’t sleep well all week; I was foggy in my work as a mom and coach. I was so sad and I didn’t know why.
But then, this morning, I saw that guy on the highway – Ryan – and it hit me. Performance-enhancing drugs killed Ryan Shay … not because he used them … God, NO!, he wasn’t dirty. He would never, could never, have cheated – not this hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, Bunyan-esque HERO. Oh, yes, Ryan Shay was clean clean clean clean clean … but he was competing on a dirty playing field. Don’t you see?!?!?? Drugs killed Ryan Shay because he broke his heart trying to catch up. He set out to prove that sheer, honest, brutal hard work was enough. He ran himself into the ground, into adrenal failure and eventual heart failure because he believed – Jesus, we ALL believed – that a clean athlete still has a chance in this f__cked up, drug-sucking, running world. But he didn’t have a chance. Drug cheats toe the starting line of every final in Olympic and World Championship events. We all know this but we turn a blind eye because, why?!, no harm done.
But HARM WAS DONE, PEOPLE!! Ryan Shay is dead. I have been crying all morning over this.
Alicia Craig Shay will cry every morning for the rest of her life over this.
Drugs killed Ryan Shay … and every single distance runner throughout the world who has ever injected himself or herself with EPO, who has ever taken one single gram of HGH or testosterone or whatever the latest untestable magic potion is; all you cheats who think, “I’m only hurting myself,” well, think again. YOU killed Ryan Shay.
At least Ryan Shay is free to fly and RUN in heaven on a clean playing field.
Blackbird
by, The Beatles
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.
Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free
Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,oh
You were only waiting for this moment to arise, oh
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
