Just a Little Late

I had very good intentions in my blogging endeavors last week but apparently the Internal Revenue Service is not flexible on due dates and clients aren't either.  So, bear with me.  We're still on Relay here...

The Relay Summit was a mixture of small group sessions, designed around teaching the volunteers how to build a bigger and better relay in their community, and "General Sessions" designed around fueling our love for Relay through volunteer stories, survivor stories, and gut-wrenching stories of losses.  It was in the General Sessions when our hearts were pulled and tugged and inspired to want to employ the lessons learned in the small group sessions. 

We heard first hand from survivors, caregivers, current cancer fighters, and volunteers who opened their hearts for 900 people to see the stories of their losses.  Some of the most moving stories were from people who had been involved with the American Cancer Society for decades before their first personal close-up with cancer itself.  These people felt, just like I did when my Aunt Mandy was diagnosed with breast cancer, like they had paid their dues to the "cancer gods" and had a free pass.  But the inspiring part of their stories was the treatments.  There was a survivor who told us about his diagnosis with lung cancer after never having smoked a day in his life, and how he was put into a genetic study which then resulted in him taking one pill a day for the last 13 months.  He has been cancer free for 11 months.  A pill a day!  And after hearing from a speaker who travels the country speaking at conventions like this about his mother's short battle with incurable cancer in 1991, we heard from a survivor who faced that same cancer a decade later and was cured.

Lymphoma.  A blood cancer.  A blood cancer just like Leukemia.

I listened to these people speak and I was overcome with so many emotions that I had anticipated going into the weekend.  But the one that came by surprise was anger.  I was angry.  I had the urge to go up to my room and punch the wall in my hotel room, thinking the pain in my hand may replace the anger and pain in my heart. 

Why couldn't my dad be the second half of the Lymphoma story?  Why couldn't he get cancer 10 years later and then go speak about how the American Cancer Society directly funded research that saved him?  He would have been a great speaker at an event like that.  Why not him?

I was not prepared for the weekend to take me through the entire gammit of grief emotions.  I wasn't prepared for anger.  I was prepared to miss him and to think of him and to be energized to try to fight back in his name.  But I wasn't prepared to remember the painful parts and be filled with the unanswerable questions that leave a defeated and exhausted pit inside.  I didn't want to be reminded of the days I saw my dad sleeping in his bed all day (unaware, at the time, of the physical and emotional struggles he was enduring). I didn't want to be reminded of our constant fear. I wanted the romanticised story of the love for a great person lost, fueling my desire to fund the cure.  That's it.  I wanted the rest to fade in the background.

But, again, these Relay people know what they're doing.  They had the conference planned out and mapped out to start at one place, travel along a specific path, and take us to the end.  I just had no idea where we were going.