Running for his son's life

When David Harris lost his son Cameron to suicide, he was training for his first marathon. Now, he's in the midst of running one for every year of Cameron's life and launching a new foundation, Cameron Helps, that will raise awareness and even fight teen depression. The Mississauga Marathon in May was his fourth of 19 marathons for Cameron.

In 2004, I was over 200 pounds and not very happy with myself, and I wanted to make a change. So right at the beginning of the year, I decided to change my lifestyle. I started to walk a bit, started to run a bit, started to eat better. The running turned into more running and I was sitting around one night and thought, "I'm going to run a marathon."

I started training in October 2004. By December, I'd lost 40 pounds.

My oldest son, Cameron, was 19 at the time. He was experiencing things in school, but nothing that would really be out of the ordinary for a teenager. He was active in sports and he had a girlfriend that he was very, very fond of. In the fall of that year, she went off to university. He had to finish another year of school. She broke up with him, and he was devastated. He started to slip away and get depressed.

His mother and I got him in to see the doctor and got him looked after. At least that was what we thought. We got him on some medication, hoping that would get him on the right track. We went back in a month and everything seemed to be going along better. But it wasn't. He was hiding the fact that it was not getting any better. In fact, it was getting worse.

February 14 came around. I got a call from his mom saying that Cameron had missed school on the Friday. I called him on his cell phone three times. He never called back. The next morning came around and I went to work. The end of the day came around. His mother called and said, "Cameron's still not home. He's left a couple of cassettes with notes on them saying, 'give this to my friend.'"

My wife Yvonne and Cameron's mother stayed in the house, while my son Jeremy and I and some of Cameron's friends went out looking for him. Half an hour after that I got a call from Yvonne. They'd found him in the basement and he had hanged himself.

My wife and my ex-wife had the task of getting him down and when I got there he was in the arms of his mom.

It was the worst nightmare you can imagine. The next couple of weeks were a bit of a blur. I really don't know what happened. My family and friends helped so much in that time to pull me and my family through to get on with our lives.

After three days of no sleep I decided to go out for a run. I just couldn't sit around any more. I had to do something.

I could not just sit idly by, not doing anything about this. I was a parent thinking I was doing the right thing - trying to do the right thing - and it turned out it wasn't. There was very little information out there on depression for teens.

I know now that there should have been counseling involved. There should have been other steps other than just slapping him with some medication and saying, "come see me in a month." The more I ran, the more I said, "I have to do something." Two weeks after Cameron's funeral, I got a group of friends together. That was the beginning of Cameron Helps. The goal was to raise awareness about teen suicide and provide assistance to families who had gone through it. We worked diligently over the next seven months. After not even running one marathon, I said, "I'm going to run nineteen of these things. And dedicate each to a year of his life."

This last year, I started doing a teen running program. It was very difficult for me to do because in a lot of these kids, I could certainly see Cameron. The goal is to establish some community runs and get not only the parents involved, but the kids and the schools. And talk openly about teen depression. We want to really help as a community to alleviate the stigma.

The first one, called the Find a Way 5k, will be in June 2009 in Mississauga. My hope is that we'll have a blueprint. I want to have Cameron Helps chapters across the country.

The research that we've done and that others have done show that exercise certainly does help with depression.

I've found this whole process for me to be so therapeutic. I'm getting so much back from this. I can attribute a lot of this to just running. Running has saved my life. And continues to do so. Because of my love of running, I think it's a great way for us to get the message out. I cannot imagine not being a marathon runner. That is so much who I am now. I've done five so far.

When I run a marathon, it's all about Cameron. I always wear 23 because that was his number. I always have a picture of him on my bib. I try to remember what he was like in that year of his life. I've really tried hard to rejoice in his life rather than grieve about it.

At the end of every race, I completely break down, because it is such an emotional thing for me. It's not easy, but if you work hard and if you believe in yourself and if you strive to do better, you can do amazing things.

I proved it to myself. Just running a marathon for anybody is such a tremendous accomplishment. But I want to take it to the next level and I want to go to the Holy Grail: Boston.

In Mississauga, I shaved 24 minutes off my time and I'm proud of that. But I missed qualifying for Boston by a minute and 22 seconds. But I get 15 more tries. I know that I can do it. I was getting down to the last 4k, and this woman - I have no idea who she was - yelled out, "Run for your son, Dave." I lost it then.

I've really tried hard to take an absolutely terrible situation and make it into something positive. I can hardly wait until the next marathon.

For more information on David and Cameron, visit cameronhelps.ca.