FTT Off-Topic: Running Away With Me

As always with FTT O-T, Not Sports And Not Apologizing; read or not.

I've been married twice, which surprises most people who have only met the Shooter Wife and Kids. The first one was a post-college experience, a mutual dance into a mine field, and it ended without property or kids or maturity or any contact at all post-relationship. It took me years to understand that I shared blame for what happened, and I really hope never to be so sad ever again. (How bad was it? I haven't spoken to her in something like 18 years, probably never will again, and lost the ability to taste for 18 months after it was over. It's still something of a miracle to me that I tried again, and again, and eventually got to today, where I've been married for 15 years and fully expect to remain married for the rest of my days, God willing and the creek don't rise.)

Anyhoo... today, I got a piece of mail. From a process server for an insurance company, telling me that my ex mother-in-law is dead. She was, as far as I can tell, a major antagonistic force in my ex's life, a domineering and lonely figure who raised her on her own, insisted that she stop her college education to move back home, and didn't show up at our wedding because, well, it was a very long flight or something. I never actually met her. And now she's gone, and there's a life insurance policy, and someone wants to find my ex and hasn't been able to. (She has, in all likelihood, changed her name twice, and doesn't appear to be on Facebook. More on that below.)

So I have cause to help someone find her. And a mutual friend who also lost touch with her a decade or so ago, but knew enough to give me her most likely name and general location. And the name of her likely second husband, who *does* seem to be on FB.

So I pinged the guy. I have no idea if he'll ever see the message, or reply to it, or whether he's still involved with her. If he is, I don't doubt that she'd refuse to take a gift from her mother, even after she's in the ground; that was the level of that relationship, or it least it was in the mid-90s, and it's hard to see how it would have gotten better with a lawyer needing to find me to fulfill a life insurance payout. Hell, it might even be a bad idea for her, if the woman left debts or other obligations. I have no idea.

But, well, my sense of what's the right hing to do is to try to pass the information and let her do with it as she pleases. If I can get that done through some guy I've never met, or if there's a little awkwardness, so be it. The right thing to do isn't always easy.

So then I ran. My usual route, which takes over an hour and hasn't been done in a while, thanks to last week's trip to Indy for the MNF game. On roads with no traffic at late night hours, when my mind can just wander. And it plays out the whole conversation in my mind, with decisions on what I'd share if she was curious about my last two decades, and a whole host of rather unlikely events.

And then I get back to the desk, and there's no response on FB, and, well, likely will never be.

Because that's what running is like. A long amount of time spent doing what your body needs to be healthy, while your mind just goes to Crazy Town.

Moving on...