Fighting all night long

Over the weekend B and I traveled down to Dutchess County to spend 24 hours fighting cancer in the annual Relay for Life. This is only my second year of involvement but B has been doing it for many years. What is so profoundly sad to me is that since she began participating, she now has more names to add to her list of "In memory of" and "In honor of". This shouldn't be the case. I am sad to say that cancer touches everyone and even I have two names on my list: In memory of Patricia Lyon Marks, my grandmother, and In honor of Angela Renee Poland White, my old friend and cancer survivor.

The Relay for Life offers many moments of reflection; my favorite being the luminaria procession. Thousands of candles are lit inside white bags bearing names, memories and hopeful prayers for those affected by cancer. The bags are lined up along the track at dark and all of the relay participants walk a lap around the track in silence, led by a band of bagpipers. It's beautiful and thought-provoking, but most of all it is astonishing to see the quantity of names of those who are battling or those who have battled cancer. And to then realize this is only one small area of the world and that those names are just a small start to the long list of names and memories and prayers.



Here is our tent and the luminarias before being lit. The team name is Earth Angels, not EARTH N G L, as you may think by looking at the picture. We had a monster of a storm around 6pm, and our site fared pretty well compared to some others.




Journal of an introspective girl