Candles Light the Way...

Okay, I'll admit it, I was glad I participated in this weekends Relay for Life. It was a benefit for the American Cancer Society, and ended up being really cool. It started at 9am on Saturday, with a bunch of fanfare and bigwigs making speeches, and then came the walking, oh the walking. Our team consisted of four people who were going to be there the entire time, and several others would would make appearance during the day. Of course during the wee hours of the morning it was just us, so there was a lot of napping and then waking each other up on the hour to switch off. The highlight of the event was at 9pm. Throughout the day they had been setting up luminaries (probably not spelling that right) around the inside of the track, which are those little paper bag things with candles inside. Each one had a name on it, and sometimes a message, representing either a survivor or cancer, or someone who had lost the fight and passed away. By the end of the night, there were by their count over 900 of them all around the track. When it got dark around 7 they turned on the stadium lights, so everything was still very bright around 8:50, when suddenly they killed all the lights, and all you could see were the candles which they'd gone around and lit when people weren't paying attention. A gigantic oval of light, one of the cooler things I've seen. They'd also set up a huge version of the word HOPE and the word CURE with the luminaries in the grandstands, so that it was illuminated as well. For the remainder of the night, as people walked the track, their path was lighted with glowing representations of people whose lives have been touched by cancer in one way or another. One of my shifts was from 4 to 5am, and I actually ended up running the first half of it, until my legs pretty much gave out. I wasn't tired, but after the dozen or so miles I'd walked throughout the day, it kind of felt like when you go to an amusement park and have been trapzing around all day and finally get to sit down in the car for the ride home. It really was one of the most inspirational things I've been a part of, though. While jogging the laps I felt like the lights were motivating me to keep going. Three of the luminaries in particular were important to me, those being my grandmother on my mother's side, my grandmother on my father's side, and my aunt. All three passed away from cancer during my lifetime. I actually ended up walking an extra half hour, as the weariness from the previous twenty or so hours just seemed to fade away.

I did a lot of reflecting throughout the day, as I ended up completing several dozen laps. Reflecting about how great life is, and how easily it is taken for granted. About how lucky I am, and how thankful I should be. And most importantly, how short our time is here, and how we shouldn't waste a minute.