A sharp, memorable pain strikes when he's out of breath. Dr. Justin Grunewald was on a mountain run a few weeks ago through rain, snow and a blast of sun when suddenly he heard his late wife's heartbeat.
It thumped in his head, cutting into his throat, taking him back to Gabriele's last moments on the couch of their Minneapolis condo. As she drew her last breaths, he instinctively had switched into physician mode because the pain of being her husband was too great to bear. He grabbed his stethoscope and listened to the sacred sound of her beating heart.
When he heard the cadence again on that Colorado trail, the sadness — and joy — of feeling her presence brought him to his knees. So he pulled out his phone and typed.
"I'll never regret doing that," he wrote. "Despite listening to thousands of heart beats and feeling thousands of pulses, i can still feel and hear yours when i need it."
He later sent those words out to his more than 60,000 followers on Instagram, where Justin regularly reveals the traumatic, complicated experience of what it's like to walk through grief — and to find love and happiness again.
You may be familiar with Gabriele "Gabe" Grunewald's heroic, decade-long battle with a rare incurable cancer. A former Gopher and elite middle-distance runner, she kept going despite surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and even started a foundation, Brave Like Gabe, for cancer research. A national champion in the 3,000 meters, she inspired thousands of social media followers all over the planet to keep doing what they love in the face of insurmountable hardship. Gabe died three years ago this month at the age of 32.
Many of Justin's followers had become acquainted with him through her very public journey. It was he who announced her death on Instagram. But some of his followers did not take it well when he started to post about falling in love with fellow trail runner Amanda Basham, with whom he now has two daughters, 1.5 years and 2 months old.
Justin told me he knows it's weird. To be this fortunate. To lose one fairytale ending, only to land another fairytale.