RUNNING THROUGH GRIEF

THE CALL came at 12:30 a.m. on June 18, 2019. It was so sudden, yet Eddie Gieda had felt something was off all day.

That morning, before his run, he made a melancholy playlist. Reflecting on his marriage and the blessings it had brought to his life, the lyrics of “Tender” by the band Blur marked the cadence of each step:

“Tender is the ghost, the ghost I love the most. Hiding from the sun waiting for the night to come.”

One mile turned to two, turned to three, turned to four, as thoughts drifted toward his love for his wife, Amanda Medina. She was opening the yoga studio she always dreamed of. She had helped him get sober. On the brink of their second anniversary, they were forging a life together — one that felt infinite within the confines of their 320-squarefoot Philadelphia apartment. As he ran, he cried.

Then suddenly he was screaming. “Gina. What the fuck happened?” His friend Gina trembled on the other end of the call. “A traffic