Relay Fall River turning 20 in June

Fundraising, Relay for Life
Tents begin to sprout for Relay in late June each year in Fall River. People walk the track throughout the night to raise money for cancer research and patient support services.
Tents begin to sprout for Relay in late June each year in Fall River. People walk the track throughout the night to raise money for cancer research and patient support services.

Twenty years of Relay

Relay for Life of Greater Fall River observes its 20th anniversary this year. In honor of that event, the local committee is designing a commemorative t-shirt. At last night’s captains’ meeting they asked us to say why we Relay for part of the design.

Walk to remember…

I couldn’t come up with anything clean enough to go on a G-rated t-shirt. My hatred of cancer is well-documented and solidly rooted in experiences that long predate what I went through with my wife Jane. One of my best friends lost her father to cancer when we were in the eighth grade. I lost my favorite uncle to spinal cancer a couple of years later. In college, I watched another friend wrestle with her father’s eventually fatal colon cancer.

Twenty-six cancers in five minutes

As a young man, I watched two of my neighbors—people I spent lots of time with—succumb to cancer from a much closer vantage point. They lived downstairs from me. He had lung cancer. More than once his wife pounded on the pipes to bring me downstairs to help him get up from where he had fallen. Not long after his death, they found she had colon cancer. She died soon thereafter.

…committee is designing a commemorative t-shirt.

Last night, I made a list of all the cancers people I knew—or know—have dealt with. In five minutes, I had a list of 26 different cancers. For all but three, I knew someone who had died from them. And even for those three, the cancer deeply changed the people who had them—and the people around them.

Relay retirement

For Jane and me, teaching was a consuming passion that left little time for much else. We wanted to do things like Relay and the Marathon Walk—and planned to do them after we retired. We both had more than enough reason to. Instead, while we worked, we sent money to the Jimmy Fund and the American Cancer Society and a handful of other cancer research funds. We envied the people who had the time and energy to do more.

…I had a list of 26 different cancers.

And then, Jane died. She died of a cancer no one had ever heard of—and that almost no one seemed to care about. I now know more people who have that cancer—or have died from that cancer—than I know people who have had or died from every other cancer I have experienced in the lives of others combined. And the number of people I’ve lost to those other cancers is not a small number, either.

Why I Relay

I should be numb by now. I’m not. None of those deaths has had an impact on me that rivals Jane’s, but every one of them hurts—and every one of them reminds me how much more remains to be done. I may hate NET cancer more than the other cancers—but I truly hate them all.

We both had more than enough reason to.

I hate them because of what they do to the people who have them. I hate them because of what they do to the families—to the spouses and the children and the mothers and the fathers and the brothers and the sisters and the aunts and the uncles and the grandparents. I hate them because of what they do to the friends.

And then, Jane died.

So I keep walking. I keep talking. I keep writing and reading and looking for new ways to help raise the money and awareness that will finally drive cancer into the grave rather than the people who have it.

Find a Relay near you

If you’ve never experienced Relay for Life, you should. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve encountered since Jane died. It’s a community of people who have fought cancer—as patients, as families, as caregivers. They celebrate the victories and mourn the losses and work to find the answers to every type of cancer there is. They work to support patients and caregivers in a dozen different and meaningful ways beyond research—from supplying rides and cosmetics to providing a place for a family to stay so they can be close to the person getting treatment.

I truly hate them all.

And if you are in the Greater Fall River area, you should join us June 22-23 at Bishop Connolly. Walk to remember Jane. Walk to remember John. Walk to remember the people in your life who have fought cancer to their dying breath—or to honor those who are still fighting, and hoping for a cure.