Relay for Life 2014

Dan's Luminaries

We went to our first Relay for Life event last night.  This is a 24 hour event, where people walk around a track to raise awareness and funds for cancer research.  The main focal point of the event is the luminaries display.  For a donation, participants can dedicate a luminarie in honor, in support, or in memory of a loved one who has or is battling cancer. The luminaries stretched almost entirely around the track- that's a quarter mile! For about a half hour, the field lights are turned off, and the luminaries truly shine. 
 

Of course, we could not resist reorganizing the bags so that ours were all together.

Dan said hello to my parents last night: 

More shenanigans last night at Upper  Dublin Relay for Life. Steve and I stopped for a few moments in front of Dan's luminaries to soak in the moment. Tears came to my eyes and when I looked up to the sky I saw the thinnest Cheshire cat moon smiling down on us. I elbowed Steve to look up. He did and we both smiled at each other and continued to walk around the track. LIVESTRONG.

Regards,
Judy

Our family bags were part of a display that stretched around the track.

For the Record

A few weeks ago, my parents, Pat, and I attended a Service of Remembrance at the Fox Chase Cancer Center.  The Cancer Center hosts this gathering every six months or so. It is hosted by several members of the care team as well as their bereavement services.   Each family was invited to bring a memento of their loved one, and to light a candle in their memory.  The candles and mementos were placed at the front of the room for the duration of the ceremony.  

My parents brought along Dan’s “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and one of the prayer cards from the funeral.  I took the "What Would you Do?" sign from my office. Most people seemed to stick with traditional items, like photos or sports memorabilia.  But one family brought a large pillow shaped like a monkey, and the placed him in a prominent place.  I looked at that monkey a lot during the service. I was going to take a picture of the memory table for the website, but decided not to, because I felt that some attendees would see that as an invasion of a private moment.  I wish that I had said hello to the “monkey family” though.  The printed program listed the names of all of the patients who had passed away in the six month period- all 425 of them. This was heartbreaking to see.  I hope that St. Anthony is working hard on inspiring that cure!

We were also invited to share some thoughts for a binder of “Precious Memories” of our loved ones. How the heck do you fit 29 years' worth of memories onto a 4" by 6" space? How would I describe my brother for whoever opened up that binder? I had to resort to using Publisher to get everything on there that I wanted, but here is what I came up with:

 

 

The text follows:

I cried tears of joy for the first time when my parents brought Dan home from the hospital. As we grew up, those happy tears were sometimes replaced by tears of frustration! Dan was bright, inquisitive, knew how to tease, and seemed to be better than me at so many things. If anyone had told me that the little brother that shaved my cat or squirted dates with Super Soakers would grow to be one of my closest friends, I’d have laughed. But that’s what happened. We used to stand on the edge of family parties, shaking our heads at the antics of our relatives and “getting it” in a way that no one else would understand. And then he would run into the group and do a somersault. That was Dan.

Dan loved celebrating life’s simchas. He threatened to dress up as Mr. Peanut when Ben and I got married and insisted that there be French dressing for the salads at the reception. He was particularly excited when we announced that he would be an uncle. He rubbed my stomach and whispered to the baby in a Mr. Smithers voice, and offered to have a tailgate party at the hospital. (Complications prevented that from happening.) Thanks to Dan, Facebook knew that I’d had a baby boy before I did. He drove to DE with my family at 1:00 AM to see his nephew for the first time and promptly gave him a nickname. He teased me for being an engineer, and couldn’t resist making fun of SEPTA around me, especially when we rode the bumper cars in Hershey Park.

One thing that I want people to remember about Dan is that he was a fighter. No matter how many times life threw him a punch, he refused to stay down. He had few reservations, and always did what he thought was right. He was quick with a joke and never shy to express his opinion. He surrounded himself with fun whenever he could. He may have been afraid to take risks– but that never stopped him. He was able to cross “skydiving” off of his bucket list a few days before he was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. He won his fight with cancer.

We owe it to Dan to follow his example. He was only given a short life, but he made sure that it was a full one. I am not ready to jump out of a plane– but I am going to try to jump into life with both feet. And I am going to celebrate his life by doing so.

Shifting Gears

The last post was a bit sad, so I wanted to follow it with something a little lighter.  Also, you will see Ben making a rare appearance on the blog.

The boys went on a bike ride last weekend.  They paid tribute to Dan in a subtle way, by wearing some gifts that Dan had given them in the past.  

 

 

 David wore his Livestrong shirt, which was a birthday gift: 

Ben wore one of the bike jerseys that Dan gave him at our “Plastic Bag Christmas.” This was the Christmas where Dan did all of his shopping at Dick’s, where he worked.  He did not wrap his gifts.  When it was time to present each gift, Dan said, “Close your eyes,” and tossed a plastic Dick’s Sporting Goods bag into the recipient’s lap.  (It reminded me of the Peanuts’ Thanksgiving special, where Snoopy tosses plates of popcorn at Charlie Brown and Company.)

Dan bought the jerseys for Ben because he was happy that Ben participated in the MS Bike to the Bay and wanted to encourage that shared interest. Dan rode in the Livestrong Challenge for 5 years, never finishing below 4^th place and always leading the cancer survivors.  

I am glad that the guys were able to participate in one of Dan’s favorite activities, and that they took a little bit of Dan with them.  I think Dan would smile if he’d been able to see their happy faces as they returned home, covered with mud splatter! (I’m sure he would have approved of their stopping at Rita’s on the way home, too.)

Memorial Day Tree Update

The flags are in honor of the service of my grandfather, Ben's grandfathers, Uncle Joe, and Dan (ROTC).

Deep in the Heart

Penn State Graduation

Dan was a history buff. I can remember him climbing on canons in Yorktown, Virginia, reading signs in Fort McHenry, and debating politics at dinner. As he got older, his interests branched out to non-American history as well. I lost count of how many times he read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. For Dan, a “light read” was about 2 inches thick. He eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Penn State.  His room is still filled with his beloved tomes of history. 

I think of Dan when I am near historic sites, even when these sites are not ones that I visited with him. Dan was at the forefront of my thoughts when I toured the Alamo in March.  As I waited in line to enter the shrine, I realized that I was surrounded by Dallas Cowboy fans. Oh how I wished to call Dan so that he could laugh with me about the absurdity of this! While Dan and I were boycotting the Eagles at the time of his death, he never would have supported the Cowboys, and would not have been able to resist a chance to say something sassy if he were there, too.

The Alamo and a bunch of Cowboys fans.

  

Inside the Alamo, I looked at the artifacts and imagined what Dan would say about them. I am sure the commentary would have been both colorful and insightful. His thoughts about battles and American history were thought-provoking although we were not always in agreement. Eventually, I made my way to a room at the front of the building.  The room was a shrine to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things.  While the buildings are maintained as a shrine to those who died at the Battle of the Alamo, the little room is the only area that still retains part of the Catholic mission character within the Alamo complex. I spent a little bit of time near the shrine, avoiding the crowd and reflecting upon the events of the winter.

St. Anthony of the River

I usually do not say that I "lost" my brother. He did not wander away, or leave us voluntarily. But I could not stop thinking of Dan while I was in that spot. So I asked St. Anthony to help us find something else- a CURE for cancer. Dan believed that a cure would eventually be found, and he always supported efforts for research, so I asked St. Anthony to provide some insight to the research scientists.  I also asked him to help me find some peace. At the time of this trip, it had been 6 weeks since Dan had died, and the winter weather had still not let up in Philadelphia. I still felt very raw inside. Every snow or ice storm brought back bad memories.

After I left the Alamo, I wandered around the River Walk for a few hours. I ate an enchilada (Dan's usual choice when out for Mexican), sipped a margarita, and thought about visits to Tortilla’s.  I remembered that I left a construction site in Quakertown early one day so that I could make a detour through Willow Grove on my way home to buy Dan his favorite tres enchiladas and black bean soup so it would be his first meal after his car accident.  I took some photos of some NCAA fans that were in town for the tournament, and I remembered Dan sitting in front of the TV with a snack, a blanket, and the sports page from the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I saw young Air Force cadets with their families, and remembered Dan’s elation at getting into the Penn State Army ROTC program.  (He sent me IMs at work for that one!) The Alamo was featured in the movie Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and I remembered the Pee Wee Herman PJ’s that Dan received as a birthday gift one year (and how he was terrified that they were actually street clothes and that Mom would send him to Kindergarten in them!)

I kept expecting these memories to be followed by the usual flood of tears, but to my surprise, the tears did not come. Like the baby ducks on the river, I was calm at the surface although I was working hard beneath the surface. I saw the flowers blooming on the side of the river bank, and saw that spring would eventually arrive in Philadelphia as well.  I know that as the seasons change and time goes by, acceptance will come with it.  I still have very bad days, where I struggle with sadness and anger.  I am never going to like the situation, and it is going to take some time for us to get used to this enormous change in our lives. But I do not think Dan would want us to be stuck in the sadness and cold that last winter brought.  I see him everywhere, and he is still with all of us who loved him.

So St. Anthony helped to bring some inner peace that day… I hope that he is working on inspiring those research breakthroughs, too. 

Trees and Threes

Dan's favorite outdoor times included the Red Baron Memorial Fishing Trip campouts.

My parents went out for dinner at the end of April to attend an “Arbrew Day” event.  Philadelphia residents who attended the event would receive a free fruit-bearing, flowering, or evergreen tree from Tree Philly.  Mom and Dad thought that it would be nice to plant a small tree in memory of Dan.  When they got to the restaurant, they discovered that all of the trees had been given away.  However, once the owner heard the reason that my parents wanted the tree, he decided to give them the tree that he had been saving for himself.  It took a little while for the restaurant staff to find the tree, because someone had put it in a “safe” place in the basement.  Instead of a small fruit tree, this was a beech tree, and is expected to grow between 50 and 70 feet tall! My parents realized that this would be a bit too large for their front lawn but appreciated the kindness shown by the owner.  So they thanked him for the tree, brought it home, and offered the tree to us.  

The Tree

Ben and I picked out a spot in our back yard near the creek so that it would get a lot of water.  (Apparently new trees are thirsty, and require 20 gallons of water a week, even though they look like twigs!) David and I planted the tree on Monday. I tried to explain that the tree was Dan’s tree but this seemed to confuse David.  “No Mom, that’s Mom Mom and Grandpa’s tree. Uncle Dan can’t have things anymore.”

I told them that in a way that he’s right- the tree is for all of us to look at and remember Dan. When we put the bid in on this house last March, I had visions of throwing family parties in the back yard. I am very sorry that we did not get to spend more time with Dan in this yard. We never got to play ladder ball or boccie with Dan here, or sit around our fire pit and roast marshmallows.  But we will continue to do those things with the rest of our family, and have a little reminder of how he is watching us.

After we were finished, Ben came out to check our handiwork and said, “It’s not a bad little tree.  It just needs a little love.” And love it we will.  

Missing you on your Three Month Anniversary, Buddy.

-Laura