The walks began as mental health breaks in April 2020. The walks were for me, Greg, to try to find humour and good in a tragic world. Nothing prepares you for the tragic loss of your child and there is no coming back from it.
On April 7, 2020, I wasn’t in a very good place mentally so I asked my wife, Ingrid, if she would drive me to the other side of the city and drop me off. I was going to walk across the city to clear my head.
Fittingly, as we were just starting our drive to the other side of the city, The Proclaimers “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” came on the radio so the humour found us even before the walk began.
Seven hours later, I was home and sore but in a much better space.
On April 7, 2021, I repeated the walk but added a bit more distance. I chronicled both of the walks on my Facebook page and my final entry for the 2021 walk foreshadowed the 2022 walk.
Since the first walk, I’ve done a number of walks because I have always found them therapeutic and meditative. In 2022, I planned to do the cross city walk once again on or around the anniversary date of the first two walks. My son Aaron had expressed a lot of interest in joining me on one of the walks so we worked out the details for an April 2022 walk and decided that we would try to raise funds for a mental health organization that Aric had benefitted from in the past.