Mark died on his 51st birthday. Recently he had run with us on a Thursday evening and over a pint ~ to restore his weight as much as his spirits ~ divulged the fact it had only been possible in view of the morphine prescribed for back pain that turned out to be more than practically anything you'd prefer instead.
People dying on a birthday turns out to be statistically significant, but attributable to excesses on the day of one sort or another. But there is a suggestion that there is a form of 'holding out' to, well, mark a day of greater significance.
Either way, people furnish our lives and it's like walking in one day to find the couch is no longer there. John Lennon was quoted as saying that life was what happened when you were planning other things; although a more meaningful quote would be to say that death is what happens whilst you're planning other things.
It does though leave one wondering why we bother getting up each day at all, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. But I guess in continuing to run ~ or walk ~ until he'd no longer the strength to do so, was an object lesson in that regard?
Seen here as part of a group of runners plying their passion across the South West Lancashire plain on a summer's evening not long since.
