The crunch-crunch of sand and seashells beneath rubber running shoes makes a new rhythm for my Christmas 11-miler. The squeak-squeak of Michigan snow is a more-common cadence. This beach experience -- seeking footing on sand as water-packed as possible, dodging waves and dislodging seagulls, which rise and circle back to their original spots behind me -- is familiar from Great Lakes summers. Wreaths on palm trees, calypso carols pouring from CD players of coconut-oil-slicked worshippers of the sun ... these are strange and new.

In an assisted-care room a mile away, aides are dressing my Mom for Christmas. Enough of her remains to rhyme "humor" with "tumor," but the time has come for her body to pass peacefully. She is confident of heaven; I take comfort in the fizzle and pop of salt surf as it percolates through the crushed hulls of a million long-dead mollusks. Spiky palm-frond silhouettes, green coconut clusters and tradewinds sing of renewal ongoing.

There will be processions: loading and unloading Mom between wheelchairs and cars. My body, hard and jangly from the miles, will dangle uselessly as a Haitian named Natasha, Mom's aide, maneuvers her between vehicles. Dad will perch a Santa's hat on Mom's head; as we feast at a friend's home, my daughter Flannery, not quite two, will swipe a similar cap from Dad and toddle under it, Santa's elf. Mom's eyes will follow baby as she adorably spills the Chex mix.

We will leave early, drive behind Mom, Dad and Natasha over streets where I ran a Hope for Children 10K 20 months ago, Mom and Dad cheering at the finish. We will glide slowly behind their taillights, red through clusters of Christmas twinkling. Flannery will bat buttons of her Winnie the Pooh Book of Bouncy Songs -- "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" -- stand and point through the windshield, piping, "Grampa! Bamber!" "Yes," I will say. "They are going on up ahead."

* * *

Home in Michigan, spring arrives even as we think it. Snow recedes, dirty ice crunch-crunching close behind. We can stretch our strides again with abandon. I will feel Mom in the sun on my skin, breath of breezes, after-race bursts from orange slices, and in shallows where I dip my feet into minnows, loose sand and snails.

A bag of ashes will come by mail. My daughter, wife and I will lift and release a fistful above Lake Michigan, to the wind.