I just watched an ad on television about National Pet Cancer Month. A pet food company is pushing for donations to find a cure for “this horrible disease.” They plan to raise $1 million this month and have already raised $250,000.

I won’t argue that cancer in dogs, cats, and other creatures is not tragic. But I will risk the wrath of PETA and pet lovers by pointing out that I have been working for a year and a half to raise money and awareness about NET. Over that time period, I have personally helped raise $28,000. Last year, all the efforts of all the foundations involved in raising money for NET research totaled, at most, $4 million.

I’m sure that pet food company will raise more than their $1 million goal. I am sure that over the next 12 months we will spend two or three times–at a minimum–more on cancer in pets than we will on NET and CS in humans.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love dogs. I like cats. My sisters had hamsters and birds and I enjoyed teaching the parakeets to talk and watching the rodents churn on their treadmills. Jane lost her dog to cancer as a young woman. I don’t wish ill on any living thing.

But it makes me angry to learn that we will likely spend more on solving cancer in animals than we will on the cancer that killed my wife. It makes me angry that in a single month we will raise significantly more to cure cancer in pets than all the efforts put in by the 950 Greater Fall River Relay for Life participants combined to cure cancer in humans over the course of this entire year–and far more than all my efforts to fund research into NET and CS over the last 17 months.

I have a hard time with the inequities in funding for human cancers. I don’t understand why breast cancer earns so much more research money than the next two or three cancers combined despite its smaller incidence than two of those cancers. I understand the politics of it and the marketing of it well enough. But I do not understand the morality of it. Similarly, I understand the politics and marketing behind the amounts spent on prostate cancer, but not the morality of it.

And as I have said before, I think research into breast cancer and prostate cancer and all the big-name cancers is important. My sister and sister-in-law would no longer be with us without the research we have done into breast cancer–and I am glad to have them both still with us on this side of the grass.

But I love my wife more than I can ever love either of those two women. And I love her more than I can love any cat or any dog–or any animal.

You can hate me for that. You can hate me for saying I would rather see money spent on unraveling the mystery of NET than on animal cancers. And part of me will understand why you feel that way.

But my wife’s life mattered more to me than anything else ever will.

My legs hurt tonight. Twenty miles is a long walk in the early spring when you haven’t had a lot of time to train.

But I now know that by September, I will be in shape to walk the 26.2 miles of the Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk. I know that by the end of next month, I will be ready to do the walking the Relay for Life of Greater Fall River will require. And I know if I had really needed to go beyond 20 miles next week, I could probably pull it off–not bad for a 60-year-old.

Walking requires putting one foot in front of the other–regardless of the distance. It requires being in reasonable physical condition. At my age, it means checking periodically with my doctor to make sure my heart is up to the task.

Ending hunger is complicated. It shouldn’t be, but it is. We produce more than enough food in the US to feed all of our people. We don’t. Part of it has to do with poverty. Part of it has to do with politics. Part of it has to do with things I know nothing about. If I can help raise awareness of the problem by joining with several thousand other people and walking an obscene distance I can cover, then it is worth the effort.

Ending cancer is even more complicated–and there is not a lot of hands-on stuff I am even remotely qualified to do. I am not a doctor, scientist or lab technician. I can read, I can think, I can write, I can speak, I can organize, I can walk. There are lots of people who can do at least some of those things–and lots who can do them all.

But there are not a lot of people applying those skills to NET cancer. Nor are there lots of doctors, scientists or researchers working on this thing. So I read about NET every day. I think about it every day. I write about it every day. I speak about it whenever I can. And I walk every time I think it will do any good.

We need more people doing the science that needs to be done. We need more resources to fund those people and the work they do. We need what they discover to reach the broadest possible audience.

So I keep doing what I can do. I read, I think, I write, I speak, I organize, I walk.

But alone, to paraphrase Helen Keller, there is only so much anyone can do–together, we can accomplish so much.

Please join us in the work ahead.

The Walk for Hunger is tomorrow. I have to be up at five and on the road by six. I have 20 minutes to write this.

The Walk for Hunger  is the day I discover how much more I need to train over the next few weeks to be in shape for Relay June 22-23. The 20 mile hike is largely flat and runs through some of the visually nicest parts of Greater Boston. Last year, we started just before 8 a.m. and finished around 3:30 p.m. There was not much left in the tank at that point, but it told me I could do the other walks I needed to do–the Marathon Walk in particular.

Tonight, I went to Field of Dreams Clam Cake Event to load up on carbs for tomorrow. Their Relay event went well–they sold out by 6 p.m. At least for now, they have taken a commanding lead in the friendly competition between their group and ours. We will tighten the gap again over the next month as our two major efforts take place: the Pasta Supper on May 30 and the Yard Sale at the Westport Grange June 3.

Fundraising events are going on across the country right now for local Relays for Life. In New England, we are also marching into the season for Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber charity events. Spring, summer and fall are filled with events that are trying to raise money for causes that truly need all the help they can get.

So in between your trips to the mountains or the beach–or whatever else you do in the nicer months–take the time to stop at the local craft fair or spaghetti supper. As state and federal budgets continue to tighten, those seemingly insignificant 5K runs every town seems to have become more and more important to the organizations who rely on them to help fund their budgets and the good works they do.

The Walk for Hunger has nothing to do with fighting cancer. It helps to feed families across the state who often have to choose between eating and paying the utility bills. With the end of the school year in sight, many children will be losing the one sure meal they have each day: the school lunch they get for free because of their circumstances.

I know we all can’t do everything people ask us to do. But if we all do a little where we can, we all benefit.

I’m exhausted.

I’m physically exhausted. I left the house a little after six this morning to present at a journalism conference in Boston. I got home just in time to go out for a dinner meeting with the two people who are putting together a part of our on-site fundraising activities for Walking with Jane’s Relay for Life effort. Both the conference and the dinner meeting went well and were very productive. And the dinner meeting got me out socially into an environment that was different from many of the meetings I do. But it was a physically tiring day for all that the things that happened in it were positive.

And the physical taxation will continue through the end of next week and beyond as Relay gets closer and closer.

But I’m mentally exhausted as well. For the last several weeks, every day has involved a new set of mental puzzles that have needed to be resolved. We have two major Walking with Jane fundraisers between now and Relay. We have designed posters and tickets and worked through some of the logistical details of how to make those work. I’ve also begun the planning and thinking process for a number of events that will take place after Relay aimed at raising money for–and awareness of NET. And I’ve continued to evolve the reorganization of the house that is our home.

And I’m emotionally exhausted. Every fundraiser exacts an emotional toll because I am constantly aware of why I am doing them–and that I would not be doing them were Jane still here. Every move I make in reworking the house brings me into contact with things that remind me of Jane and her absence. Every meal I eat alone, every laundry I fold that includes only my clothes and not hers reinforces that.

I am tired in my body, in my mind, and in my soul.

But that exhaustion only solidifies my determination to find the answers to Jane’s cancer and all the other diseases that take people away long before they should be. I don’t want others to feel what I feel now. I don’t want others to look ahead and see this life that stretches on like the steppes of Russia in winter in the absence of the person they love.

I know we all die. I know I can’t change that. I know we all will suffer pain and loss. I know I can’t change that. But when death comes, I want it to be after a long and fruitful life–and I want the spouse left behind to know the time that remains will not be too long before they, too, find that final rest.

None of us knows the time we have. But I fully expect to live for many years yet. That time needs to be used wisely and well. So I will fight to find the answers to this disease in the only ways I know how. I will study and write and speak. I will put fire in the hearts of men and women and help fuel their quest for answers and cures. I will help to find the money they need to do those things with the gifts that I have.

And one day–perhaps before I die–perhaps not–Jane’s quest to defeat this disease will end in victory. And there will one less disease stealing people’s lives before they want to give them up.

I am constantly amazed by how hard all this is.

My niece is entering her third year of medical school. Monday, she had to move from Boston to Springfield to begin her hospital rotations. She asked me for advice earlier in the spring about what kind of used cars she should look at since she would need one to get back and forth to the hospitals she would be working in when public transportation was not running. Jane’s car was sitting in the garage and it seemed silly to me that a perfectly good vehicle was sitting there getting absolutely no use, so I offered my niece the car.

After we finished moving her on Monday, she came back to the house with me so she could spend Tuesday dealing with the registry, the insurance company, and getting the car inspected and the oil changed. Finally, all that was done and it was time for her to go–and for me to get to my next meeting. I left her at the gas station and started up the hill. As I did, I looked back at the little white Saturn. My eyes filled with tears and I had to pull off the road for a few minutes to recover my self. Another part of Jane was leaving my life to live somewhere else.

“You’ve given it a good home,” the voice in my head told me. “It will be well-used and not lonely any more.”

And I know all that. It was the right decision–just as letting Jane’s body go was the right decision 17 months ago–and just as, eventually, emptying the closets and the drawers and sending her clothing to Goodwill and the Salvation Army will be the right decision when I can bring myself to face those tasks.

But none of it will be emotionally easy.  Part of me wants to do the “rip-off-the-Band-Aid” approach. But the wound remains greater than the Band-Aid metaphor can cover. There are stitches and staples and gauze bandage wraps still involved here. Another piece of the wound has healed. The car was the latest in the ongoing prosthetics I have been able to give up and move on from. Next is the empty space in the garage her car filled until yesterday. Or maybe it will prove to be something else.

All I know is, I keep trying to move forward every day. Every day, I try to take another step against the disease that killed her. Every day, I try to learn one more new thing. Every day, I try to help one more person. Every day, I try to do the work we might have done together.

I know that if I spent every day waiting for death, I would not be true to who we were or who I am. Together, we lived life every day–sucking the juice from every experience–no matter how good or bad or bitter or sweet. It were a profanation of all we were for me to stop doing that now.

There is nothing insane about what I am doing if you live inside my head. There is nothing crazy about what I am doing if you have been where I have been and where I am.

It begins with knowing the needs of the many usually–though not always–outweigh the needs of the few or the one. It begins with the a belief in the gradual perfection of the human soul–with the belief that its is more important to see the humanity in figures like Christ and Buddha than the deity or the mythos–that it is more important to emulate them than to follow them.

Those things, though, are only the raw materials that the fires of life use to forge a human spirit.

Here is the fire: for eight months I consciously watched my wife wither and die. She was sick when I first met her with the disease that would kill her–but neither of us knew that. We both knew she had awful attacks of painful gas that no pill could touch and no doctor could suggest an answer to beyond it was all in her head. We both knew she had frequent bouts of insomnia–but believed–as her doctors believed–that stress was the base cause.

And then her legs began to swell–and we knew that was not because of stress and not because there was something in her head. Then she found the lumps in her liver–and the doctor told her it was probably cancer–but we would not know for sure until after the biopsy. And then we knew–and we knew it was a cancer even most oncologists had only read about. And then we learned it was destroying the valves in the right side of her heart. And her diarrhea was becoming more frequent and harder to control.

I watched her world shrink. I remember vividly the last time she drove her car. I remember vividly worrying about whether she could climb the stairs to from the garage–and very vividly the day she finally could not–the day I had to lift her up one stair at a time because she would not let me carry her.

I remember vividly the day of her heart operation and how it stretched from four hours to six to eight to ten–and the sight of her punctured everywhere by tubes and wires and hoses when they finally let me in to see her.

And I remember the diarrhea and helping the nurses change her bed-clothes and the madness and the comas and the delirium.

And I remember kissing her good night for one final time as she drifted back into the coma she would never emerge from.

I want the day to come when no one goes through what she went through.

I have pledged my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor to the task of killing this cancer.

Please help me make that real.