Polly's Run

I recently found out that the last grandparent of my children died last year. My children haven't communicated with me in years due to PAS, and their Mother has repeatedly refused to give me their addresses or any news at all about them.

She was 82. I first met her in 1975, the same year I met my children's Mother, who was engaged at the time, and started living with her.

We got divorced in 2002. My three sons were "involved in [the] divorce up to their armpits" by one parent, an adult who did not act in the best interests of these minors.

I remember my divorce attorney at the time telling me a truism: You want to know what your wife will be like in twenty years? Go talk to your Mother-In-Law.

I went for a plodding 4-mile hill run in my town yesterday as part of my laborious return to running after a long layoff due to injury, jogging past the school on the hill where I went to kindergarten and then traversing the same hill via Highland Avenue. Ascending its steepest part from yet another direction, I put Polly squarely in my mind as I toiled up Mt. Daniel Drive.

My lungs burning, sweat rolling into my eyes, my breathing tortured, I made my peace with her memory during that painful quarter-mile. I am sorry for my children that the last of that generation of blood-relatives has departed, and I hope they are well.