I Found a Dead Body on My Morning Run
Editor’s note: The following contains descriptions that may be disturbing to some readers.
At first, I didn’t realize what I was looking at, or what was looking up at me.
It was just after sunrise on a Saturday morning in Prospect Park and I had been away from home for a restful and fun two weeks in Europe. Thanks to jet lag, I woke up early, Brooklyn time. Hoping to loosen up my plane-constricted legs and work off the fromage and croissants I had heartily indulged in, I threw on a tank top, pants, and running shoes for what felt like the first true spring day after a long winter. The birds chirped, the sun shone, and as I made my way through the tree-lined paths, I felt bathed in a sense of joy of being back home and alive.
The roughly five-mile loop from my stoop through the park has become a touchstone run for me in the last four years that I’ve lived in the neighborhood. I often see the same people: the elderly gentleman on the bench, the lavender lady setting up for Greenmarket on Saturdays, the kids feeding the ducks by the lake, the dogs roaming the greens leash-free in the morning. It doesn’t surprise me that Prospect Park has become home to the country’s largest half marathon; it’s an urban oasis and the closest thing to a backyard many of us New Yorkers have.
[asset removed due to syndication rights]
Last Saturday felt no different. About a mile and a half into my run, I rounded a clearing and thought I saw a tree of some sort, a trunk or limb that had fallen into a grassy expanse. Two police cars were parked nearby and a pair of officers worked to secure blue tape around the scene. Others were still arriving as the sun made its way higher into the sky. Police presence is nothing new for New Yorkers, so I initially brushed it off and kept running along the path, a curve that would bring me closer to the scene.
I saw a body lying face up with arms reaching into the air, as if trying to grab at something, but not quite reaching it. His legs were stretched out and appeared to be covered in something brown, what I initially thought was mud. Around him was a circle of dark dirt that almost made him look like he was emerging from the earth. Maybe he was sick and just waiting for medical care? But why wasn’t he moving, his limbs frozen in position? Two police officers tried to shield the scene with a sheet, but it was virtually impossible, given the hook of the jogging path around the grass.
It felt like I had run into an invisible wall of air. I sucked in a deep breath, and not because I was running too fast. I stopped my mileage tracker and sat on a curb nearby as other runners slowed down to do the same, many experiencing the same gasp that I had.
“God, that takes the wind out of you,” a man in a blue shirt with a headband who had slowed down with me said.
“Is that a dummy of some kind?” another runner asked. “It can’t be real.”
We stood and stared at it from the jogging path, popping our earbuds out, beads of sweat running down our temples. Any halo I felt from my vacation had been sucked out of me along with the wind. My legs, usually reliable allies in pushing me forward through the universe, had morphed into two Tin Man tubes. It was a shock unlike anything I’ve ever experienced on or off a running trail.
Another man asked if it was a film set of some kind, not far-fetched as the park is often flanked by crews. That notion was quickly dismissed. No craft service or camera gear was nearby.
“Keep it moving,” a cop told the stream of pedestrians, which, of course, only made many people want to slow down further.
“Jesus, is that a body?” a woman said.
“Is that a shopping cart nearby?” a different woman asked. “I wonder if he was homeless.”
A third cop car showed up, and I noticed a woman from afar who was distressed and standing close by. I wondered what, if any, connection she had to the person who had died, how in just a blink her entire world may have changed as the rest of New York was moving on around her.
Others trotted by not noticing, or giving a glance and a shrug. A kid with a boombox bolted by on a bike as Jay-Z blared into the treetops, the birds singing back. After what felt like an eternity, but what was probably only a few minutes, the cops placed a sheet over the body.
Then, someone confirmed that it was indeed a man. A man who had set himself on fire.
***
This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen a dead body, nor was it the first time that running and death felt knotted together.
I was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, the “Running Capital of the World,” and from a young age, I had heard about the mysterious car crash of running icon Steve Prefontaine. After files concerning the case had sat on my desk for years, in 2015 I finally was able to spend months investigating it for ESPN’s Grantland, only to conclude that the death of a 24-year-old runner will never make sense. Because it is that: the death of someone gone far too young.
For years, running has helped me cope with my own losses, chiefly that of my mother when I was 17. My first marathon was in Eugene on the anniversary of her death, about two weeks after I had covered the Boston Marathon bombings. When I crossed the finish line at Hayward Field, I collapsed not just because I was tired, but because for the first time in the nine years since she died, I realized she was never going to be at the finish line. I was literally running the miles-and living the life-that she couldn’t, a grief that I knew must have been shared in Boston acutely.
A few months later, my uncle (her brother) died suddenly, and I charged to the finish line of the Philadelphia Marathon weeks after that. Other races have followed since, along with work stresses and heartbreaks, losses of a different sort. Running has been the one constant in a world where the ground of mortality seems to constantly shift under my feet. At best, the sport offers structure and confidence, but at worst, it can offer a false sense of control, that you can run 26.2 miles but the person you love and miss will still be dead, no matter your finish time.
Although our culture tells us that it’s proper to be sad when someone dies, it’s generally seen as less acceptable to be angry. But the truth is, I was furious with my mom, and with the other people who have died in my life, and I had to pound that rage out on the asphalt. Consider it a sort of punching with the feet, a percussive act that forces a body into a rhythm when the world feels completely void of it. I’m far from alone in lacing up with a calloused heart, and I’ve long suspected that you have to be furious in some way, conscious or not, to voluntarily train to run 26.2 miles early on a Sunday morning. Maybe that’s why I’ve always seen running as a fuck-you to death. Running takes the gentle act of walking and dials it up, forcing a greater awareness of breath, sweat, heartbeat, pulse, muscles, the ability to use your body as a heightened vessel of life.
Some of my rethinking of running and death came about by accident. In 2014, I was in northern India reporting a story for The New York Times about the growth of the yoga industry. As a sign of respect, I had taken my shoes off to interview a monk in his serene yoga space overlooking the sacred Ganges River. The monk examined my feet and, knowing nothing of my biography other than that I was an American journalist, told me something no one else in my life ever has.
“You must be a very angry person.”
I was taken aback. He didn’t blink.
“You must be a runner.”
I confessed that I was, and he nodded knowingly, telling me that in his view, anger is stored in the feet. Hence, my need to pound it out to the tune of 20 to 40 miles per week. I’d seen this impulse in myriad athletes I’ve covered over the years, and I know Billy Mills is among those who consider running a spiritual practice. (It was Mills who said: “The number one objective of my Olympic pursuit was to heal a broken soul.”) Running has a way of making the world into a subtle funhouse-that which is downhill becomes a literal relief.
Far from home, my mental health coping device had been exposed.
***
What was exceptionally eerie about seeing the body that Saturday morning was that three days prior I had just been emailing an editor at Runner's World about death and running.
She had reached out to me, wondering if I was interested in submitting a piece for a forthcoming issue that would “feature stories, blurbs, and lists of wonderful, terrible, and hilarious things we’ve seen while running.”
In college, I had bonded with a group of girlfriends over watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit during our first years in New York City. We’re all still friends and have since discussed that a common trope of the show is a jogger going out for a morning run and finding a body. I was always curious why that was, particularly in today's age, as a handful of high-profile murdered-jogger cases have arisen and as more attention is finally being paid to catcalling and other sexual harassment faced by women runners.
I wrote back:
"Has anyone ever considered Law & Order: SVU? I'm a fan of the show, but why do so many episodes open with joggers finding bodies in the park? I've always wanted to ask the head writers why and yes, I know that sounds insane, but I credit the show for making me wary of leaf piles in parks for years. Thankfully, I've yet to find a body."
Three days later, I did.
And as I stared at it, I thought of the email and realized that no amount of television would ever do justice to how horrible it is to see a life having just ended before your eyes. I felt stupid to have ever thought otherwise. I felt awash in a new wave of sympathy for my friends and colleagues who are emergency room doctors, war reporters, military veterans, or others who regularly see such sights.
The PTSD from such witnessing doesn’t go away after a day or two. I had never met this man, yet his death now impacted my life in a way that was going to stick around far beyond a news cycle.
***
[asset removed due to syndication rights]
As fate would have it, one of the first crime reporters who showed up at the scene that morning in Prospect Park was a former student of mine at The City University of New York’s graduate school. Through such early reporting, I learned that the body belonged to David Buckel, an acclaimed environmental and LGBT rights attorney.
“I am David Buckel and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide,” read a handwritten message left at the scene, according to the New York Daily News. “I apologize to you for the mess.”
As much as I respect Buckel’s work and mission, it’s hard for me to see his action as anything beyond a profound act of suffering. As I stood dumbstruck, staring at his corpse on that spring Saturday, I saw it as an act of defiance, but also a cry against life. I thought of Mary Oliver’s line in Upstream that “the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us” can be one and the same; I thought of the gentle calm of the candle on my coffee table and the violence of Dante’s Inferno now splayed before me in an otherwise serene park.
Eventually, I walked away and tried to run again, but about a mile past the body, I stopped as I held back sobs. I inhabited the same park as this man, but it may as well have been a different universe. I thought of the unimaginable amount of pain in his final moments, how it was so far beyond anything in my comprehension. I had spent the better part of the last couple of months touring the country and world to plug a book about mental health, yet one of my own neighbors was so deeply hurting. I felt fraudulent and yanked from whatever bullshit headspace I was in to another person’s reality, an inevitable cliche of death experienced by the living.
I made my way home and I started writing and wondering what went through Buckel’s mind in those last seconds. I was moved by the compassion online from those who loved and respected him and were heartbroken by the loss, but shocked to discover that someone had posted a picture of his corpse on Twitter, an act of dehumanization which I hoped none of his friends or family had seen. And, what kind of world do we live in where someone’s first reaction to seeing a burnt, dead body in the park is to share it on social media?
That afternoon, I heard from someone I know and care about whose depression had turned into a suicide watch. I fired off a letter telling the friend how much I cared, how much value they added to the planet, how they have so much ahead of them. I made plans to see the person in a few days, who I am told is in good care. I didn’t mention the body from a few hours earlier, but the idea of seeing someone else gone too soon was too unbearable. Quite simply, no one should feel alone or unloved.
I’m a writer by trade, but words often feel inadequate against the forces of darkness that can invade the mind. We can all do better with listening, we can all help people find their tools, be it therapy, writing, exercise, or whatever. I pawed through books, quotes, notes scattered around my apartment, hoping that those smarter and wiser than me through the ages could help. That scramble led me to this, from Oliver Sacks, one of our greatest poet laureates on life, death, and the body:
“There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever,” Sacks wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2015. “When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate-the genetic and neural fate-of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.”
No one lives in our heads but us, a seemingly simple, bare, raw fact that can get lost in the poetry and platitudes. It is incumbent on those of us alive and around to let those on the edge know they’d be missed, that they’re worthy of this planet, that we want and need them here.
It can be dangerous to think one can always be a savior for all who hurt in the world, but, at the risk of sounding cornball, I do think there’s a valid case to be made for hope. That there is beauty and goodness worth fighting for in this world, even when we’re in our darkest, most threadbare moments. I know in my life, others have shown it to me, like a flashlight in the face, sometimes without even realizing it. The least I can do is try and return the favor.
Then, the next morning, I woke up and I went for a run.
***
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255 or by visiting suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
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