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Runner struck by lightning and dies at finish line brings up a debate I’m having with myself (blog version)

For AL.com version, go here

The young man who was struck by lightning and died just short of the finish line of a 50K trail race in Kansas rekindles a longstanding debate I have had with myself.

How do I want to go out? Instantly doing something I love, like playing basketball — the way Pete Maravich went out; The way this 33-year-old Kansas runner, Thomas Stanley went out.

I have Lewy body dementia and my lifespan — based on averages — is 4 to 8 years after diagnosis or symptoms begin. I’m in my third year. So unless I get hit by a bus or struck by lightning, I have received plenty of advance warning about what will happen to me as these excess proteins continue to clog up and kill brain cells. Slowly, it seems, and that’s a good thing. I think.

I’ve written about lightning a lot. As I’ve explained here before. As you can see I’m almost metaphysical in my feelings surrounding lightning. What random bad luck messed up universe would strike down a person. Very rarely, the average is 27 a year and there have only been 19 this year.

Part of my interest in lightning was living in central Florida, lightning capital of the U.S., where there are daily thunder-boomers, as my kids used to call them.

Stanley was 33 years old and from Andover, Kansas. He was the Director of Business Initiatives at the Kansas Leadership Center where he has worked since 2008, according to the center’s website.

He was the third person this year who has been killed by lightning while running.

I am 59 years-old and have lived a lot more life than Stanley. I wonder if I would have taken Stanley’s place if I had been offered.

I think I might have. It would be slam dunk ‘yes’ if it was a friend or relative. But I’m not sure, (uh oh, here I go debating my brain again.) I know this disease will take hold but I am also working on living every moment. I do enjoy life.

Stanley probably didn’t know what hit him. I know what is hitting me. I think I’ll stick around — and hit back.

Oh, and though Stanley didn’t make the finish line, the race officials gave him a finish because he had run the distance.

For now, I’m still running.

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Holy Zeus, God and Lightning

I’m being silly but something has me a little shaken, or maybe the word bemused is how best to describe how I feel about this. Bear with me.

I wrote a story about lightning today for AL.com. I was going to put a photo I took many years ago, on I believe Fort Walton Beach or Destin on Florida’s Panhandle.

Probably 25 or 30 years ago, my wife, Catherine, and I had just pulled up to the beach and despite a gathering storm got out to walk. I saw lightning and grabbed my camera. I ended up getting a nice shot of two lightning bolts out in the ocean reflected like a mirror-image on the wet beach. This was the days of real film so I really had no idea what I had until later developed. But when I saw it I went to camera store and had it enlarged and framed. I was proud.

My wife, not quite as impressed as I was with my lightning photo, has tolerantly let me hang it — in the basement.

Anyway I decided to take a picture of my picture last night to use as an illustration for a column, which was about my longtime  near obsession with the cosmic qualities of lightning.

One of the stories I tell in my article today is about a golfer who had  his silver cross, which was on a chain around his neck while playing golf in a thunderstorm. The cross  vaporized as the golfer was hit by lightning on the Florida course. He lived, but the lightning left an indelible mark. The lightning flash boiled the cross leaving him with a permanent scar in the shape of a cross.

So when it came time to add a photo of my photo, I was shocked. I took about eight snaps. One was different from the rest.  One of the two bolts appeared to be in the shape of the cross.  So I’m not one who thinks it’s a  miracle when an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on a  grilled cheese sandwich. That sold for $28,000  by the way. Hmmm.

This is the same photo which is hanging in my basement. The cross appeared in one of eight shots I took. See second picture, lightning bolt on right shaped like cross.  In the third  picture I circle the cross/lightning, but it’s seems kind of hard to see. To the naked eyeball, the picture looks like the one on the left. So to be clear, there is only one photo. I snapped multiple shots — 8 — within about a 5-minute period. My guess is there was some kind of lighting change that happened as I moved to a slightly different angle? But still baffling. And added on to other inexplicable ‘coincidences’ — here and here — I am beginning to think I have a brain disease.