THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290445
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: 76 lines
``I run into the light, the light of dawn and dusk - light that at times holds promise, at others, peace.''
- The late George Sheehan, M.D. and running guru.
How to explain running? How to explain it to those who do not run? There are books on the subject, but they hardly include enough words, or enough of the right words, to translate the mystique beyond the realm.
In Runner's World magazine this month, though, there are words that help us understand a little more. Three essays, actually, under the common heading, ``Running Through Grief.'' One comes from a man who lost his mother, another from one who lost his wife.
And one comes from the broken heart of Norfolk's Jeanne Kruger.
In the 14 paragraphs of ``Dark before Dawn,'' Kruger sings a beautiful, haunting song of love. Love for her son, Matthew, a skate-boarding seventh-grader who was killed nearly 10 years ago by a truck on Hampton Boulevard.
A love that is intertwined with Kruger's need for her 5 a.m. runs around Ghent, beside the foraging racoons, under the stars, past the intersection where Matthew died, where she throws ``I love you'' into the stillness; her runs past the tears, the memories and voices, and the unconscionable longing.
At 49, Jeanne Kruger, the dean of students at Blair Middle School, is a terrific runner. She is Virginia's 45-to-49 women's record holder for the marathon who incredibly notched a personal best 3:06:19 last March, 11 years after she started running.
She does not run for Matthew. She does not run because of him, either - two months before Matthew's death, Kruger completed her first marathon.
But if she did not run, she knows it would forge another breach in her life. The runner must run, the artist must create, just as Kruger, a former English teacher, had to write and submit her essay, at the urging of friends, more than a year ago.
``Four months crying and two months crafting,'' is how Kruger describes the writing process she worked through, not that the grieving ever ends. Running made it better, though. Makes it better.
Never going less than five miles, sometimes up to 20, three or four times a week, talking and working things out with her running partners, Kruger charts her progress, and recovery, in minutes and hours.
``Therapists would go out of business,'' she says, if everybody shared as true running companions share. ``All the major steps have come on a run.''
In the weeks following Matthew's death, Kruger says, ``I tried to run so I didn't have to grieve. And I ran myself into a stress fracture.''
In running, yes, there is pain. And competition. But for Kruger and others, running is also about crying and coping, of breaking down and building up without pretensions, a kind of communion that stretches far beyond simply staying in shape.
It is introspection, insight, vulnerability and self-discovery. For the most obsessive, it is identity.
But for all who run to live, it is about an inexplicable bond of humanity, as in the silent hand-holding of Kruger's running friends at Matthew's funeral, that words fail to convey.
So Kruger runs on. And writes, of the dark before dawn. Of the light that brings peace.
But not yet.
``Smiling, you renew the pace, lightened by the pleasure of the memory, and round the final corner. . . . Remembering the words carved into the stone where Matthew now lies, `He needs the wind in his hair,' you acknowledge that you, too, need the wind in your hair.
You break the winner's tape of the streetlight and wipe the tear that slips. Five minutes and seven seconds. You look to the stars and you murmur, ``Getting better.''
- Jeanne Kruger. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
LAWRENCE JACKSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Jeanne Kruger runs past the tears, the memories, and the longing for
her son, Matthew, who was killed nearly 10 years. by CNB