Dad asked me to go this year—I hadn't been planning to do so as last year's reduced me to a sniveling mess. It was a cold rainy night and Brenda and I hightailed it out of there partway through the opening ceremony. There was a woman speaking about how we have to be proactive in our own health, how she felt sick and the doctors couldn't find what was wrong...but she still felt sick so she kept going back and kept going back...and Brenda and I had enough of that going on in our immediate lives just then—the feeling not right and nobody being able to figure out why. We were not of the mentality to hear a similar story that ended with "You have Cancer."

But my excuses ran dry when the sunny 90° day dawned, a good 40°-50° warmer than last year, and I had received an answer to my health woes that didn't involve the "c" word anywhere by the end.

I got all the way through the opening ceremony this time, and nearly lost it when it was announced that my mother's old company had dedicated a lane in her name again this year. It warms me that she was so well loved, and that her memory is kept alive by those that she cherished so deeply: her friends. I remember the 2005 Relay for Life...I spent it with her at the house. Dad went off to the event, leaving us to hide. There is and honor in fighting a disease and publicly proclaiming that you WILL overcome, and I don't mean to insinuate otherwise...but for Mom, she was handed a death sentence from the get-go.

"You will never be Cancer free."
"Good news is, at the rate of growth, you have about fifteen years."
"At this rate of growth, you have about two years."
"This is growing much more rapidly than we had expected. You have about three months."

She found it difficult to face her killer when she really was in no mood to die.

So, this was really the first opening ceremony that I have ever attended, and I didn't know about the survivor lap. I didn't know how tight my chest would feel as I imagined her down there in a purple shirt. I didn't know that tears would blur my vision and show her image to me down there on the track, only to lose her all over again when I blinked. I didn't know how much it still hurt. They released their balloons into the air and I tilted my face toward the sky to watch, looking through firmaments that I don't know to actually exist to see her face...and, there, I know where I can find her.



It was a beautiful night.