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Hi, I'm Dave I say founder of StoryCore.
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For additional information visit DignityMemorial.com You know I'm a bit different.
We all are very unique people right?
And we're always looking for you know people that we connect with.
And when I met Gwen she was the same kind of weird that I was.
That's Yasser Salem talking about his first date with his future wife, one of your men.
So that night we actually just went back to her place and hung out.
No funny business. But we stayed up all night chatting about everything and nothing at all.
I remember we had a quick kiss goodbye and I do remember just kind of like running home at full speed.
So excited. I never thought about this but I guess running has always been a part of our story from the very beginning.
This is the final episode in our season about game changers.
In this meeting between Yasser and Gwen would change both of their lives pretty dramatically and leave them to do things they never imagined were possible.
Did you ever think you would have run the marathon before?
No. I never in a million years would have wanted to run the marathon before.
I was very lazy. So you know, I would be willing to drive anywhere, maybe ride a bike but running was definitely not my thing.
It's the story core podcast from MPR.
I'm Michael Grafalo. And I'm Jasmine Morris.
Let's be honest running a marathon is hard.
Yeah, even the word marathon is synonymous with something painful and awful.
And for those of us who had never run a mile without being chased, much less 26.2 of them, it's staggering to even think what that must be like.
For someone to want to do this, there's usually a reason.
And over the course of Yasser and Gwen's relationship, they'd be faced with more than one.
Before we get to why they started running, let's hear more about how Gwen and Yasser first met back in 2006.
That was when my space was.
And eventually I ran across Yasser's profile, which caught my attention because he had all of these pictures of him and all of these really weird costumes.
And the costume that caught my eye was the lime green thong that Borat wears.
There wasn't any actual pictures of him without like a wig and sunglasses on or some kind of hat.
So I really had no idea what this guy looked like.
And then I was out having capy-hour drinks with some friends one night.
And you know, I got a little tipsy and I thought, this is the night I'm going to make my move.
I'm going to call this guy from my space.
I don't have any idea what he looks like, but I do know what he looks like in a thong.
Do you remember how I helped your goldfish?
Oh, that's right. I had a goldfish that was very sick.
Goldfish is there? Was it Dirty?
Dirty, yeah. He was really sick and I was freaking out.
And so Yostor found out that if I fed him frozen peas, it would help him because it turned out that he was just really gassy.
And Yostor saved Dirty's life.
That's when I knew you were the one.
He was chronically gassy.
So we had to just give him peas all the time.
Oh, Dirty. We gave him a burial at sea.
Do you remember that? Yeah, he did die.
We sent some nice words about him and threw him into the Hudson.
Now, helping out with a sick goldfish is one thing.
But soon, Gwen would have to count on Yostor for a lot more than that.
A couple of years into the relationship, Gwen started having migraines.
Then one day she woke up and she couldn't see it all from her left eye.
Turns out she had a tumor on her optic nerve.
And during the surgery to remove it, Gwen had a stroke, leaving her with a rare form of short-term memory loss.
I'm actually still able to encode memories, but the pathway to the memory is what is interrupted.
And so if you can imagine you had 100 papers that you put into a file drawer, but you don't put them into any sort of marked files, how do you go about finding that piece of paper that you're looking for?
So that's pretty much how my memory works.
So I always have a note card in my pocket that tells me what the date is.
And I have to write down when I eat meals because sometimes I might eat lunch three times because I don't remember that I ate already.
I haven't seen you actually forget something completely, but you do forget certain details.
I guess that's okay. I mean, people forget things all the time.
I guess that's right. Yostor likes to make me feel better by saying everybody forgets.
Yeah. And then I say, really, everybody forgot in the last two years of their life.
It's actually three years now.
Three years now. That's right.
See, I forgot. The doctors say the brain can continue healing up to two years, but whatever is not backed by that point is not likely to ever come back.
And so I'm going to have to live the rest of my life this way.
And the thing that scares me the most is like the thought that I will wake up one day.
And I'll be 80 years old and I won't remember the last 40 years of my life.
Do you remember when you first came out of surgery?
I know that I used to always think that I was in San Francisco.
What are those things called?
Do you remember? Confabulations?
Yeah. Do you remember another confabulation that I used to have?
You used to think that your coworker Barbara was your mom.
That's right. Even though she's a completely different race than you.
That's funny. Yeah. And at one point where you were confused because you thought we had broken up.
And I would ask you, like, why do you think you're staying in my place?
You're just like, whoa, we're just cool like that.
Yeah, sorry about that.
After all, you've been doing for me.
Thankfully you got over that.
I'm thankful for that as well.
So is there any positive things that have come out of losing your memory?
Well, I ran the New York City marathon with you, my boyfriend.
And one of the things that I asked you was to help me as a trick, to not let me look at any of the mile markers along the way.
And if I asked you how long we've been running, to always tell me 10 or 15 minutes.
And it really works like a charm.
And when we got to the end, you and I were running across the finish line.
And as if on cue, I started crying my eyes out.
So happy. You know, I have spent a lot of days since my injury comparing myself to what I used to be in feeling sad about the things I've lost.
But doing the marathon shows me that I still have a lot left in me.
Actually they both discovered some kind of inner reserves that they didn't know they had.
When and Yasser would go on to run eight marathons together.
And after running the marathon, Yasser learned to swim, something he'd always been afraid to do.
We're not talking about the doggy paddle here.
He started competing in triathlons.
And even Ironman competitions, long distance triathlons where you have to bike, swim, and run over 140 miles.
So whatever Yasser put his mind and body to, he achieved.
Even becoming a champion eater.
I won the Konowi eating contest in little Italy one year.
I think I did 31, 32, Konowi.
I set the world record one year and corn on the cob in West Palm Beach.
But what I'm really known for is the Torded donuts and the donut derby.
These are bike races that include riding bikes as fast as you can and eating as many donuts as you can.
The best eaters that I knew couldn't bike very fast.
And the bikefers that I know couldn't eat a lot.
And so my first year at these Torded donut and donut derby races, I went there.
I just crushed it. But the thing that Yasser and Gwen always did together was run the New York City Marathon.
In one year, while training for that event, their relationship leveled up.
What I did was I told her, hey, we got to go do a training run in Central Park.
And so I'd put this elaborate proposal thing together.
You know, it's February, New York.
And I had this surprise set up near Columbus Circle.
It's a beautiful bridge.
We had like 20 somewhat of our friends dress up in shirts and each of them were assigned a letter that spelled out, Gwen will you marry?
Yasser. So we're on this run.
The finish line is very close to where the finish line is for the marathon.
And towards the end, Gwen said, who are all these people?
They were all dancing, facing away from us.
And then, you know, they all turn around.
They all turn around to spell everything out.
And people are all up on the bridge.
Their cameras everywhere.
She's still trying to figure out what was going on.
And I was wearing my Borough Thong underneath my outfit.
Keep in mind, it was very, very cold.
And I just took it all off.
And then she turns around now.
I'm in my Borough Thong.
And I got down on one knee and she said, yes.
Do you have any questions for me?
Well, I am actually curious about how my memory loss has affected you.
Because I'm sure that it's been a very stressful situation for you.
Yeah, it's a challenging thing to deal with from both of us.
You know, it's gotten us closer in many ways.
When you help somebody like that, it's, uh, you have no choice but to really get close to them.
Closer than you already are.
Yeah. I mean, I always felt very close to you, but you've really been there for me more than I could ever have asked.
So thank you for that. You're welcome.
Yes, Erin Gwang came to story core for that conversation in 2011.
They'd spend the next seven years together, making the most of life despite Gwen's memory loss.
It was a great run. After the break, how one of them had to find a way to keep going alone.
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In summer 2018, yes, Erin Gwang were about to start training for yet another New York City marathon, their annual tradition.
But they noticed something was off.
Gwen started losing her appetite.
So they went to the doctor and the news they got.
It was like lightning striking twice.
They realized she had stage 4 lung cancer.
Some diagnosis to her passing.
It was just a fight, fight, fight, the entire time.
There was no time to really process it.
Up until the last moment, she's like, this is not the last of me.
I'm not going yet. But the last thing I said to her is I love her.
She said she loved me and those are our last words.
She passed a few hours after that.
When she passed, I was in a really, really dark place.
For months, and I think people around me could really sense it.
They were worried that Gwen's passing it had taken all of my heart away.
For a time that was the case.
But at that point, I was like, I got to do something, honor her somehow.
She died, but I didn't have to let her memory go away.
I guess I was just very attached to the idea of making sure she lives on.
So what have you discovered about yourself as a result of losing your memory?
Well, I guess I don't know.
When you go through something like this where you have almost lost everything and you've looked death in the face, not to sound dramatic, but it is what it is.
You sort of recognize things that you didn't notice before.
And I've realized just like how much love I have in my life.
But it's everything. You know, it's just noticing a child on the street or a noticing how pretty the trees look during spring time or whatever it is that has been the biggest thing for me rediscovering the world and how beautiful it is.
When she passed in July, her and I would typically start training that month.
So I just kind of put a lot of my emotions into the running.
If I was sitting there in my apartment, I wouldn't have been able to kind of move through things.
I needed action. And it was an escape from things.
I acknowledge that like I was running.
But I was kind of running with the pain.
I was running through it.
That was the first time that I decided I was never going to run with music.
I wasn't going to try to escape out of my thoughts.
I was just going to be in it.
A few months after Gwen died, Yasser did run the New York City Marathon in November 2018.
And he kept running. He signed up for another marathon.
Number two was Las Vegas Rock and Roll marathon on November 11, 2018.
And another. And another.
Number three was the Philly Marathon on November 18th of 2018.
Number four was the Seattle Marathon in Washington state on November 25th of 2018.
Over the next year, Yasser would run 50 marathons in 50 states.
I was running one marathon.
Sometimes two marathons.
Everyone's running out.
I'd run three marathons in a week.
Number nine was the Mississippi Blues Marathon in Mississippi.
A lot of these places I ran in were super remote because New York, Chicago, Boston, these are massive, massive marathons.
Tons of people. And was the Phoenix, Miss Marathon in Arizona on the...
But there were plenty of marathons where I ran.
There were only like 20 people in the race and there were no spectators.
So I was out in the middle of the night.
Right? It was just me and nature.
That was just a really good time for me to like allow myself to feel things, right?
And I would have moments where just wearing those sunglasses and I could just let it all out, you know?
And nobody's around. Number 30th was the Anchorage Marathon in Alaska on June 22nd of 2019.
I really loved running in Alaska.
It was during the summer solstice when I got off the plane.
It was still bright outside.
I like two or three. I'm in the morning.
It was so magical. And finally, number 50 was the Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington, Virginia on October 27th of 2019.
When I finished the 50 races, I was really proud of myself.
It was just a year of thinking about Gwen.
And the running was really just kind of like this vehicle for remembering her.
These days, yes, her limits himself to five Marathons a year.
But one of them is always the one he ran with Gwen in New York City.
You know, good memories come with sadness.
Like she's not here anymore and she's gone.
And it's hard for me to deal with both of those things at the same time.
Remembering her is tricky for me sometimes?
I don't know. I guess I'm just a little scared of how terrible it will feel.
You know, she was the most important person in my life and I lost her.
But Gwen was just full of life and full of love.
You could hear it in her voice.
But if you didn't know her, and I got to live that vibrancy every day, you know, and I'm so thankful for that.
I'm engaged to be married now and it took me a long time to get here.
Lots of bumps on the road and I found a wonderful partner named Jen and you know, she's created a lot of space for me to be able to still continue to remember and honor Gwen.
And she has that emotional intelligence.
They can allow this duality to exist, to love Gwen and to love her and can love, can love again, you know.
That's Yasser Salem. It is wedding this fall.
Around a dozen of Gwen's family members will be there, including her sister and her dad.
This all for this season of the Storycore podcast.
This episode was produced by Judd Estee Kendall and Max Young Rice.
Our executive producer is Amy Drozdowska.
Jared Floyd is our technical director and our fact checker is Katie Scott.
The art for this season was created by Liz McCarty.
Thanks to Michelle Dallinberg, Perry Gregory and facilitator Tomas Rios and special thanks to Yasser Salem.
Learn more about the foundation he started in Gwen's name at GwenOfEarMan.org.
And to keep those voice mails coming, our question for this week is, how do you honor someone who's important to you?
Tell us about it at 702706.
Talk. That's 702706 TALK.
I'm Jasmine Morris. And I'm Michael Garofalo.
Thanks for listening.
