Walking the One-Eleven

I know a man who knows a women who just about every day walks south on Route 111 in Suffolk County. She starts at Main Street in Smithtown and heads down into Hauppauge and beyond the Long Island Expressway. Her goal is to walk south down Route 111 until she reaches Main Street in East Islip. I’m not sure how far that is, but it’s pretty far. She doesn’t walk every day because some days she just doesn’t feel up to it. You probably know how that feels.

The man I know told me if you drive down Route 111 some morning you would probably see her walking along the road. She always has on a worn Mets baseball cap and bright orange sneakers. I had no desire to see her walking and I rarely ever drive on Route 111. I said to myself, “Good for her.” In reality, every so often I get on the treadmill that I bought for $750 from Sears that resides upstairs in my home. The treadmill has many uses, including displaying clothes that I am too lazy to hang in my closet. On the few occasions when I am actually walking on the treadmill I think of the woman my friend knows who walks along Route 111 and consider what type of person would want to walk along Route 111 and attempt to eventually walk that road from Smithtown to East Islip. I would always come to the same conclusion: she and I are of a different mold, just like most of us.

One day the man I know who knows the woman who walks along Route 111 in a Mets baseball cap and orange sneakers tells me that the woman fell the other day when she got to the railroad crossing just south of Suffolk Avenue. He said she was quite shaken, to the point that doubt started to set in with her that she may not reach her goal of Main Street in East Islip. In addition, he said she was no longer likely to walk alone, so he and a few friends volunteered to walk along with her when they had the time and the energy. I said to myself: ‘Good for them.” And then I removed some of my clothes from the treadmill and walked for a lusty 15 minutes.

As time always goes by, and 2013 passes into 2014, I met my friend who I last heard was walking with the woman who walked south on Route 111. He told me he was no longer walking with her. I smiled to myself, conceding to myself that neither he or those other friends were made from the same mold as that woman with the Mets cap and the orange sneakers.  Her life was consumed by her daily walking.

Then he told me she died. She was diagnosed almost a year ago with pancreatic and liver cancer. Actually, it was January 11 of last year. Her cancer was inoperable and her treatment was incurable. But she wanted to do one thing before cancer claimed her body, and that was to walk what she considered to be the length of Route 111. He told me she only made it as far as a little past the railroad tracks south of Suffolk Avenue.  Each subsequent day she could not walk as far to the point of not at all. But she did wake every morning and put on her Mets cap and orange sneakers.

My friend started to say goodbye and turned to walk away when I rushed up behind him. After all this time I wanted to know why a woman with incurable cancer wanted to spend her last moments walking down the same Route 111.

He said she was diagnosed on January 11, thus 111, and she decided at that time she wanted to face her cancer straight up, so she decided to walk all over Route 111. She got pretty far, but no far enough, like so many of us.