A Chilling Challenge

When news about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge started circulating, I knew it would eventually find its way to me.  In 2013 I wrote about my personal connection to this disease, so I am certainly prepared to put my money where my grief is.  But the point of the Challenge is to raise awareness beyond just the people who were personally affected by ALS.  To seek out new individuals whose hearts will be touched by the terrible facts about ALS and its slow march to death, or by the light-hearted bravery of a friend willing to get drenched, and who in turn will open their wallets to in some way help researchers get ahead of this disease.  

I'm a bit of a stickler about conserving water, though, so instead of wasting a bucket full in a drought year, I'm just going to cut straight to the money.  

This carefully folded currency has been tucked away in my Guatemalan change purse for more than two years, perpetually waiting for some "special occasion" purchase I never could quite commit to making.  

Tomorrow President Grant will travel via ATM to my checking account, where within 24 hours I will finally give him a worthy purpose by electronically donating him to the ALS Association.  

And I nominate you, beloved readers around the world, each and every one of you: within 24 hours please make some contribution to this fundraiser.  

You can give in many ways, by donating what you can afford, by using your social networks to reach out to more people to raise awareness, by partaking in the actual Ice Bucket Challenge and getting doused and nominating three friends.  Choose what you can do, but do something.  

ALS is like a train wreck happening in slow motion; you know there is great suffering and death at the end of the line, but you are powerless to get off the train.  If enough of us contribute, that will someday change.

Casualties of War

So fades from this world another light.
Another flame burned out long before it should.
Darker are we that remain in this absence.
More terrible our useless wrath against the curse we can not defeat.
It is cellular annihilation, in the face of which our only defiance is to LIVE. 
Live ferociously, shine unapologetically.
Every breath, fierce;
every heartbeat, thunder.
But in this rebellion there is no solace.

Last night a brave little girl who should not have known what suffering is quietly released her spirit from struggling with cancer too relentless to overcome.  The only thing greater than my anguish is my anger, as ineffective as that is.  This child, my niece's daughter, was about the same age as my son.  She had a glowing smile and feisty attitude.  When the cancer in her brain returned, and doctors told her there was little they could do, she said, "Well I'm just going to fight that!"  

And oh how she fought.  Through dangerous, lengthy surgeries and sickening treatments and debilitating pain and weakness.  She battled despite the hopelessness of the odds and in the face of frightening and chaotic changes in her home life and family structure that would have challenged the patience of any healthy child.  Such herculean efforts should have been rewarded with victory, right?  The glorious remission, the sought-after No Evidence of Disease we all pursue so valiantly.  Such is ever the language of cancer: a lexicon of warriors and battles and elusive conquest.  With a culture of heroism and war even adults struggle to live up to, it's no wonder we experience such outrage when children are drafted in as soldiers against cancer.

This morning I saw a new side of the cancer front: volunteers.  Like nurses and doctors performing triage amid the hail of gunfire and boom of cannons, my six year old daughters saw Mommie's gaping wounded heart and volunteered their own kind of first aid.  Here are the sympathy cards they made for me.  

 My great-niece and I with flowers, looking happy.

Me weeping fountains of tears at my great-niece's grave.

I'm touched and comforted by their kindness, but brokenhearted that they ever had to participate in this damned war.  That any of us do.