All of the pain from 2012 needs somewhere to go.

I struggle to process everything that has happened and keep everything inside, but unfortunately, it sometimes makes its way to the surface in the form of anger and frustration. I can feel a rage building inside of me, but I keep it controlled by channeling it all through exercise and jiu-jitsu.

My workouts are now non-negotiable, and I am training jiu-jitsu nearly every day. For the most part, this works, but there is a limitation. You can only train so much in a day.

One evening in early 2013, I am driving and get a call from my father. It is a very heated exchange, and I unravel. It’s not just about my dad. I think about all the crashes, Abby, the divorce, and my grandmother, and all of that sadness turns into anger. I know there is no chance I will be able to calm down and go to sleep after this. My heart is pounding, my mind is racing, and I can’t turn it off. I can’t calm down. I tell Natalie that I’m not coming home and that I need to go to the hangar. I go to the mat room seeking the only way I know to find relief, wrap my shaking hands, put on some angry music, and find a place for the rage to go.

It’s nearly 10 p.m., and I am going round after round on the punching bags, without counting how many rounds I have fought through. I call to mind all the loss I have felt in the last year and channel my emotion into each and every strike. I don’t feel any pain. As I relentlessly pummel every bag in the room, my hands, shoulders, and lungs should all be burning, but I feel nothing. At one point, I am kneeling on top of the jiu-jitsu dummy and hitting it without remorse. I am trying to conjure every bit of grief and transform it into rage in hopes that I will get it out of my system. This is the only way I know how to deal with everything. It is getting so intense that as I strike the bags, I am inadvertently letting out a war cry, which joins the symphony of my hands exploding into the bags and the chains rattling. It is violent.

Then, all of a sudden, I snap out of my rage-fueled trance because I see someone else in the room. Ryan Ramos is standing there.

I stop the clock and the music, and he says, “Natty called me. She said she was worried about you and that you’d be here. Are you okay?”

Immediately, I soften, and all the rage and violence evaporate. I take off my gloves, and my first instinct is to do what I always do and tell Ryan I’m fine, but I can’t. I want to laugh it off, act tough, and say that I just needed to get my workout in, but I know he can see I’m hurting inside. I know I can’t lie to him.

I sit down with him on the bench, still sweaty, with my heart racing and struggling to breathe, and everything I’ve been trying to hold back starts to come out. I take the wraps off my hands, revealing swollen, bloody knuckles. I break apart and tell Ryan everything that I have been struggling with in silence for too long. Ryan doesn’t say much. He just listens and sits with me while I unload all my emotion on him. He doesn’t try to fix me, give a speech, or give advice. He just sits with me in my pain, and for the first time, I feel like all the weight I’ve been carrying doesn’t have to be carried alone. Ryan doesn’t need me to act strong. He doesn’t need anything from me. He is just there to be my friend. Ryan showing up for me feels like the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. He drove in late at night, with a newborn at home, just to sit with me. Having him as a friend is one of the greatest gifts I’ve been given, and that night, I learn for the first time that it’s okay to need help sometimes.

Later in February, when the anniversary of the CG6535 crash is approaching, I feel myself struggling again, dwelling on the crash, and many of the same feelings keep surfacing. One of my good friends, Scott Austin, has an idea for a fitting tribute to the crew. Scott was in flight school with me, is one of the best leaders I have ever been around, and is a fitness enthusiast. He is at Air Station New Orleans and has established a strong workout community there. Scott creates the CG6535 memorial workout as a way to honor the crew we lost last year. The workout is four rounds of a 400 meter run, 65 air squats, and 35 burpee pull-ups. One round for each of the crew members we lost, and a rep scheme that is 6535.

I’m excited for any brutal workout, so I ask some people at the Air Station if they would be interested in joining me. I get my good friend Art, who is also my jiu-jitsu professor, and Min and James, two of the other pilots, to join me at the track near the Air Station. There is no pull-up bar, so we have to make do with the crossbar of a soccer goal.

The workout doesn’t sound bad, but it is absolutely brutal. As I run each lap, I think about the crew. I think back to surfing with Thomas and flying with Dale. I think back to that terrible morning and having to call Natalie. I remember all of it, but I can express my pain through the suffering of this workout. The runs spike my heart rate, and then my legs burn terribly on the rounds of air squats. The burpee pull-ups are absolute misery, and the 35 reps seem to take an eternity, but I cherish every movement because I feel like there is meaning in the suffering and it is a way to honor their sacrifice.

The real magic happens when the workout is over. When we are all exhausted, having suffered together for over an hour, we talk about our memories of Thomas and the crew. We share our stories of finding out about the crash. We open up to each other about more than just the suffering in the workout, but the suffering after the loss of our friends, and I realize I’m not the only one still carrying the weight of loss.

I learn that working out doesn’t just make me stronger. It can be a vessel to hold my pain. It transforms grief into sweat, anger into movement, and even silence into shared suffering. I know that it can’t bring back Thomas and Dale. It can’t fix my parents’ marriage or bring back Abby or my grandmother, but it can help me move forward. Shared suffering can bring people together, and all the weights we carry seem lighter when carried together.

Author’s note: I have done this workout almost every year, only missing it when I was deployed on ships.

It started out just like any other brutal workout, but it became so much more to me. It became a way to honor Dale, Thomas, Fernando, Drew, and all the other aviators we have lost. I have organized it across different Coast Guard air stations, sometimes doing it with a couple of close friends and other times coming together as a whole unit. Before the workout, I usually tell a story about Thomas or Dale to help keep their memory alive. I talk about the impact their loss had on me and how fitness, and the Workout to Remember, has helped me through some of my hardest times.

In 2020, Natalie and I bought a gym in California and named it Forward Functional Fitness. Along one whole wall, we had the words Keep Moving Forward painted, the words that helped me through flight school, loss, pain, and so much suffering over the years. We took over the gym in January but had the grand opening on February 28, and there was only one workout I could think of to officially open our doors, the CG6535 workout. One of Thomas’s best friends came to the grand opening and gave an incredible speech about Thomas, and a group full of people who had never met him were inspired by his story.

The CG6535 workout has grown over the years and eventually became the Coast Guard Aviation Workout to Remember, honoring all of the crews we’ve lost. I have organized it for Coast Guard units and my gym, coached it, suffered through it many times, and competed under that team name. Every time I do it, I remember the people we lost and carry their memory.

Fitness has always been a part of my life, but now I realize it is about so much more than getting sweaty and sore. It can be a way to remember, to forget, to find relief, or to move forward. More than anything, it can be a way to bring people together so that nobody has to suffer alone.