For most of us awareness in any particular area tends to increase in proportion to the degree that we are personally affected–family, friends, co-workers, or ourselves; it was certainly true for my wife and I and led to our involvement with Relay for Life. In a span of two short years both my sister-in-law and her husband died from cancer. The youngest of three girls, my wife’s sister persisted valiantly in her stoic struggle against ovarian cancer; despite her debilitating decline, which the disease inflicts on its weakening host, Alice never relinquished her dignity even in the final hours of her life. She left behind two beautiful, little girls, not yet teenagers, and a husband devastated by the loss of his wife, uncertain of his family’s future, and unaware that his own encounter with the dreaded disease would soon claim him as one of its victims irreversibly altering the destiny of his family. The irony of losing both parents to cancer in the span of two years is as tragic as it is unimaginable; to witness such a catastrophe challenges one to the depths of one’s being and becomes a matter of conscience that none of us can afford the luxury of being idle bystanders in life. The story of these two remarkable girls, now young women, is too personal for details, but it was and continues to be, an achievement of family, love, patience, and grace.
Co-workers, colleagues, family, and friends who have fallen to cancer’s ravages are never far from us; our memory is the vehicle by which we secure for ourselves and for all those with whom we share, the only form of immortality the living can offer. Oral, written, anecdotal, scholarly, spoken, recorded, photographed, whatever the medium, the message in these instances, with all due respect to Marshall McLuhan, is never eclipsed by the messenger. Here are a few photos from this year’s event. One night several years ago at a Relay for Life event after the luminaries had been lit, such a recollection of loved ones spoke to me: it is a frail and incomplete intimation of their lives.
Relay for Life
For Alice, Cary, Becky
all of us
Their names find us where we are,
without our calling. They echo
from a canopy of near-by trees,
spill onto the interstate clamoring
beside us, cool us in this humid air
like a breath which plays along
the nape of the neck. Each year
the list grows longer, embellished
with the pageantry of a medieval fair,
a joust of knights, champions
who honor neither death nor guilt
yet summoned to test their arms anew.
A band of Minstrels performs,
finds folds of gaiety among
the earthen fabrics of mourning.
Troubadours calm the flames
of passion with a song or regale
our local heroes with legends of
their feats. All around light flickers
from fires preparing feasts,
from candles lit with hope.
We eat this night and celebrate
a fullness we cannot sustain.
A voice calls out these names:
Irene, Lois breast six years
Dick leukemia four years
Robert prostate six years
Emma breast twelve years skin two years
Bob nonhodgkins lymphoma one year mouth three years
Sam colon seven years
Gerald bladder eight years
William pancreatic 2 years
Night shares a purpose with the day.
Names carom from the bleachers,
fade into the cheers of football games
fought on fall nights and stronger legs.
Laughter trips from conversation,
holding memory as evidence
that we have reason to be here.
