I went out and looked at the stars Tuesday night. I was hoping to see the aurora because of the massive solar eruption early in the week, but there was no sign of that beyond a light haze off to the north that may have just been the beginnings of cloud cover.

But there was a bright red star in the sky that may have been Mars. And if you know how to look, there were red, white, and blue stars scattered across the deep navy blue of the night sky that most people see only as black.

My  fascination with astronomy was one of two things Jane never quite understood about me. She liked star-gazing well enough, but why I wanted a telescope I am not sure she ever figured out. And how I could spend an hour looking through it at the craters on the moon…

But she indulged me just as I indulged her fascination with cross-stitch. She loved watching the picture emerge from the canvas even more than she liked the finished product. It was the thing we both loved about dark room photography–that moment when the picture first popped out and filled the paper with light and shadow held a fascination for us both that digital photography never quite managed to duplicate.

Tomorrow night I will talk about the stars in another context. The theme for the Greater Fall River Relay For Life this year is Relay goes Hollywood. The Kick-Off party is being staged as Oscar Night with cancer survivors as the stars. We will celebrate their lives and their victories with a faux red carpet and each will have a star with their name put up on a wall.

But we will also take time to remember the fallen. Not everyone who encounters cancer survives the experience–as I know far too well. For all our successes with some cancers and some patients, there are still far too many for whom cancer remains a death sentence–there are too many who have died.

And their deaths will fuel the third part of the night: organizing to fight back–organizing not just to raise money but to raise awareness among patients and doctors about all the cancers that are out there. We need more research, yes. But we could have far more survivors with stars on that wall if we caught more cancers sooner. A cancer that is discovered early is far easier to kill than one that is found after it has really had time to sink its roots into flesh.

If you are local, please join us tomorrow night. Tickets for adults are just $10, for students a mere $5–and children under six are admitted free.

And if you are not local, seek out the Relay for Life in your own community. Find a team to walk with–or form a new team. My central concern here is usually NET–but my experience with it has broadened–not narrowed–my concern. Cancer kills. Focusing on just one form of it to the exclusion of the rest will not save those with other kinds.

Come walk with us.