Walking for Mom?
Sep. 8th, 2011 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrTomorrow morning my wife Carole and I will begin walking the 2011 San Francisco Bay Area Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. It's a sixty mile walk with a simple goal: raise funds for the fight against breast cancer. It will raise awareness as well, and will embolden and hearten those currently fighting the disease... seriously. I know for a fact that quite a few breast cancer patients cite making it to the next year's 3-Day as one of the most important things that keeps them going and fighting week after week, month after month. But in the end, it's really about raising the huge sums of money needed to pay for research, treatment, mammograms, and more.
This will be my ninth 3-Day. I've crewed the Boston walk three years running and I've walked DC twice, Philadelphia once, Twin Cities once, and Tampa Bay once. This is my first time ever walking in the San Francisco 3-Day... same for Carole. It's a hilly route with incredible scenery and we've both been looking forward to it for months.
Even as I type, we're finishing our preparations for the walk. We've both loaded big duffel bags with our sleeping bags and bedrolls and extra clothing and cold-weather gear for wearing around camp at night. Camp will be on an island smack in the middle of San Francisco Bay and it's going to be windy and in the high 50s at night. We'll drop these off at opening ceremonies tomorrow morning before starting the Day 1 route and they'll be waiting for us at camp tomorrow night.
This 3-Day will be unlike any of the others I've done before. While each walk I've participated in as a walker or crewmember has been special and interesting in its own way, this weekend's walk is so beclouded by the recent death of my mother that I'm afraid that my head won't really be in the game. Mom passed away just over a week ago from congestive heart failure and related symptoms. Not, I must stress, from breast cancer. She died four days shy of her 82nd birthday. She led a full life, but her death came suddenly and as a surprise. My siblings and I hadn't realized the situation was so dire until we got the "get here NOW" message. And unfortunately, none of us made it before it was too late.
You can read the blow-by-blow of Mom's passing here and here.
I'm here tonight, when I should be getting to bed and getting a good night's sleep before rising early to hit the street, to tell you the rest of the story.
Many people have cheered my decision to go ahead and walk San Francisco less than week after my mom's funeral and assumed that I'm walking to honor my mother.
You want the truth?
I'm not. Mom was never over-enthralled by my fervor for the fight against breast cancer. By the time I started walking in 2008, she was tired and mostly focused on hearing news about her grandkids -- my nieces and nephew. I'm quite sure that the empowered, feminist, boldly-speaking woman that she was when she was a bit younger would have been very cheered by my being so interested in women's health issues, but at the end of her life, my mother thought my work was okay and all that, but didn't really perk up each time I called to say that I'd finished another 3-Day walk. On a scale of Deep Importance, my walks and my training and my fundraising were on the level of, say, my new hot water heater or our plans to plant a patch of mint at the bottom of our driveway.
And that's unfortunate. I wanted, among other things, to make Mom proud by doing something for other people, something that didn't really benefit myself in any way. I just waited too late in life to start.
I loved my mother very much. I don't hold against her that my sudden zeal to change the world started when I turned 40 and she'd turned 78. I know that the woman she was when she was in the prime of life would have been proud to have a son who was less interested in what was on TV that night than in persuading people to donate to a good cause.
So if I'm not walking in honor of my mother, why am I walking? Who am I walking for?
Why, your mother. And your sister. And your aunt. And your daughter. And your neighbor. And for you. I'm walking for my friends at church, Penny and Paula. I'm walking for my co-workers, Robin and Diana. I'm walking for my wife's aunt Debbie. I'm walking for Bridget Spence, diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in her early 20s and still fighting as her 30th birthday approaches. And I'm walking in honor of incredible people like Julie Kauker, 3-Day crewmember and mother of my 3-Day friends Kristian and Kenneth. Kristian and Kenneth know all too well what it's like to lose their mom; Julie passed this year after a multi-year fight against breast cancer.
Losing my mom was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. One day she was there, sarcastically witty as always. I assumed she'd be around for years and years to come.
Then, suddenly, she wasn't.
I walk because it's awful losing someone you love. I don't want anyone to have to experience what I experienced a day sooner than absolutely necessary. When you love someone, you'd really rather Death not steal them away like a thief in the night.
This will be my ninth 3-Day. I've crewed the Boston walk three years running and I've walked DC twice, Philadelphia once, Twin Cities once, and Tampa Bay once. This is my first time ever walking in the San Francisco 3-Day... same for Carole. It's a hilly route with incredible scenery and we've both been looking forward to it for months.
Even as I type, we're finishing our preparations for the walk. We've both loaded big duffel bags with our sleeping bags and bedrolls and extra clothing and cold-weather gear for wearing around camp at night. Camp will be on an island smack in the middle of San Francisco Bay and it's going to be windy and in the high 50s at night. We'll drop these off at opening ceremonies tomorrow morning before starting the Day 1 route and they'll be waiting for us at camp tomorrow night.
This 3-Day will be unlike any of the others I've done before. While each walk I've participated in as a walker or crewmember has been special and interesting in its own way, this weekend's walk is so beclouded by the recent death of my mother that I'm afraid that my head won't really be in the game. Mom passed away just over a week ago from congestive heart failure and related symptoms. Not, I must stress, from breast cancer. She died four days shy of her 82nd birthday. She led a full life, but her death came suddenly and as a surprise. My siblings and I hadn't realized the situation was so dire until we got the "get here NOW" message. And unfortunately, none of us made it before it was too late.
You can read the blow-by-blow of Mom's passing here and here.
I'm here tonight, when I should be getting to bed and getting a good night's sleep before rising early to hit the street, to tell you the rest of the story.
Many people have cheered my decision to go ahead and walk San Francisco less than week after my mom's funeral and assumed that I'm walking to honor my mother.
You want the truth?
I'm not. Mom was never over-enthralled by my fervor for the fight against breast cancer. By the time I started walking in 2008, she was tired and mostly focused on hearing news about her grandkids -- my nieces and nephew. I'm quite sure that the empowered, feminist, boldly-speaking woman that she was when she was a bit younger would have been very cheered by my being so interested in women's health issues, but at the end of her life, my mother thought my work was okay and all that, but didn't really perk up each time I called to say that I'd finished another 3-Day walk. On a scale of Deep Importance, my walks and my training and my fundraising were on the level of, say, my new hot water heater or our plans to plant a patch of mint at the bottom of our driveway.
And that's unfortunate. I wanted, among other things, to make Mom proud by doing something for other people, something that didn't really benefit myself in any way. I just waited too late in life to start.
I loved my mother very much. I don't hold against her that my sudden zeal to change the world started when I turned 40 and she'd turned 78. I know that the woman she was when she was in the prime of life would have been proud to have a son who was less interested in what was on TV that night than in persuading people to donate to a good cause.
So if I'm not walking in honor of my mother, why am I walking? Who am I walking for?
Why, your mother. And your sister. And your aunt. And your daughter. And your neighbor. And for you. I'm walking for my friends at church, Penny and Paula. I'm walking for my co-workers, Robin and Diana. I'm walking for my wife's aunt Debbie. I'm walking for Bridget Spence, diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in her early 20s and still fighting as her 30th birthday approaches. And I'm walking in honor of incredible people like Julie Kauker, 3-Day crewmember and mother of my 3-Day friends Kristian and Kenneth. Kristian and Kenneth know all too well what it's like to lose their mom; Julie passed this year after a multi-year fight against breast cancer.
Losing my mom was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. One day she was there, sarcastically witty as always. I assumed she'd be around for years and years to come.
Then, suddenly, she wasn't.
I walk because it's awful losing someone you love. I don't want anyone to have to experience what I experienced a day sooner than absolutely necessary. When you love someone, you'd really rather Death not steal them away like a thief in the night.
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