five for twenty-five

This is a long post. Fair warning.

My sister Karen is on the Waco committee for Relay for Life. This year was her 13th year participating, fundraising and organizing this event. She has helped the American Cancer Society raise money and awareness, mostly in the memory of our dad and for others that she knows, who have been affected by cancer. I have always been very proud of her for devoting herself to this cause. 

My sister Helen has joined her on many occasions walking and participating in the all night activities. Many times, in the wee hours of the morning, they are the only two left on Karen's team who lasted all night. This year, with my mom moving to Texas, and it being the 25th anniversary of our dad's death from colon cancer, all five of us including our mom, traveled to join Karen and her team for the relay. Here we are, five sisters and one niece and Mom.

For those of you who read this blog and know some or all of us, here we are...

Left to right, starting in back...Mom, Janet, Helen, Wanda

front row left to right... Aida (Janet's daughter) Karen and me, Norma. 

You will notice we are all wearing ties. This was part of the tribute to our dad. These are his ties that he wore in the 1970's and 80's. We are a family of keepers!Among other things, Karen made a sign board. As I walked up and saw my picture and a copy of the blog post that I did awhile back, the tears started to roll. I did not know that she chose to use my words, written spontaneously one morning, as a feature on her story board. If you click on the words blog post here or up there, you can read the original post. The morning I wrote it, I was inspired by the photo of Leah and the dragon fly. I had uploaded the photo without a plan and just sat staring at the tiny details of the dragonfly. That is when the phrase my dad always used..."secure the detail's" came to mind. And thus, the content of that post and as it turned out, the content of our tribute to the memory of our dad that weekend.

The other side of the story board showed photos of him. She said she arranged the top photos according to his hair line! You can see where we all got our large and in charge curly hair! It was fun to look at all the photos she chose, some of which she had in her old girl scout album which most of us hadn't ever remembered seeing before.

The trophy standing in front was his. He was awarded Salesman of the Year during his career with the Rockwell Water Meter Company. He was a salesman for many years, traveling around from city to city, setting up and selling water meters for city water lines. We found the trophy while packing and un-packing Mom during her move. I have a feeling it will travel around and pop-up again somewhere, sometime.

The event was officially started with the singing of the National Anthem. The clouds in this picture do not show the threat of rain that had been building and looming all week. This moment of sunshine was hopeful.

We visited the raffle-ticket prize booth and all purchased some tickets and chose a few items to drop our tickets in the boxes. Karen had donated a bird house that had been part of a collection my mom had. It was a fish shack themed bird house. My brother-in-law told me he was kind of sad to see that one being given away because it was one of his favorites. She also donated some items that I had made a while back to her fund raising stash. As it turned out, in a funny moment of realization, I won the bird house and was able to proudly award it back to my brother-in-law! A gift that keeps on giving!! My sister Wanda won Karen's donated items that I had made. My mom won a cross made out of bed springs that was a topic of discussion, because I spotted some old bed spring mattresses in the shed of my sister Helen and her husband's family farm. (I was so trying to be an American picker while at their farm!)Helen is now the owner of the bed spring cross. I also won a pie from a local  restaurant. The raffle luck gods were raining down on us!

With donation money, luminaries can be purchased in honor or in memory of someone who has been touched by cancer. We had 25 bags for our dad for the 25th year remembering him. Later in the evening a luminary lighting ceremony takes place. There are hundreds of these that line the track and stadium. It is pretty emotional to walk the track and see all the names of people who are being honored or remembered.

 Karen had put some pictures on a few of the bags and a few of the fun moments with our dad when we were young. When he would want to discipline us, show us off or just take a picture, he would say "line-up girls"! When people hear that we are a family of five girls and our mother, most people have a look of horror and always say..."oh, your poor dad". But you know what?...he secretly loved having his five (plus one) girls around him.

Somewhat ironically, with the bags all placed around the track in alphabetical order, our line of bags for our dad happened to be placed between the signs for colon cancer. And, our team "tent" was very close by.

I, as well as my sisters, had luminary bags we donated for friends and other relatives who have had cancer. Here we are the next day, sorting and reminiscing over those people that we honored and donated to the American Cancer Society in their name.  I chose not to post any pictures of others besides my dad for privacy reasons. There are a few of you that are close to our hearts that read this blog. Please know that you had a luminary honoring you.

A big thank-you here to my sister Janet, who braved the elements and any care for a salvageable hair-do aside, to gather all of these luminary bags that were around the track in the names of friends and family members of my sisters, my mom and myself. I will share more about that in a bit.

Helen, you look like you are orchestrating a choir...oh ya you are!

Here is my niece Shawna and her sweet baby girl Caroline.  They arrived as the sun was setting, just shortly before the survivor walk. This baby girl as sweet and tiny as she looks, at only 5 1/2 months old is crawling and pulling herself to stand!! You have to see it to believe it!  I guess having three active older brothers makes you a feisty little girl!

 And as the survivor walk got under way, just as the crowd joined the cancer survivors and their families after their honored walk, the rain that everyone was so very much hoping to stay away started.

It didn't take long for it to really pour and as I called out to Karen, my niece Aida and Karen's grandson Carter, the sky opened up with thunder, lightening and a deluge of rain.

As we approached the end of our first lap the sky was rolling with thunder and lightening. And with that, just two hours into the event, the decision had to be made to call the Relay for safety issues. It was devastating for all the volunteers, my sister Karen included, to have a whole year of work organizing and planning this event come to such an abrupt end. What was normally 10 hours of activities and continuous walking of the track, in relay form, keeping a member of each team on the track walking was cut drastically short. All the plans for late night-wee morning hours never got to happen. Tears were flowing along with the rain. As everyone chipped in to pack things up, there was a somber sadness all across the field. There was also a sense of urgency, as we were all getting drenched, as the big strikes of lightening and loud thunder struck above us. The safety of all the people was the upmost concern. As I mentioned before, Janet ran off and looped the track gathering all the luminaries that were donated by all of us girls. She didn't even know many of the names that were being honored or remembered, she just looked for our names on the bottom of the bags. She was able to get nearly every single one. Thank-you Janet for getting yourself soaked to rescue our luminaries!

Just as the rain had started I texted Leah and told her about it. She and Chuck were together and he texted back and said...
     
    "Leah said the weatherman was right. I was hoping not. Tears from heaven".

I didn't share that particular text with my family, because I didn't think I could say it without choking up. Later, as I texted Chuck and told him it was cancelled because of the rain and that Karen was so overcome with disappointment, he texted back and told me to give her a message. It was...

"Tell Karen congratulations...this was a success, because she managed to bring all of you together".

And with that, I say to Karen, thank-you for all of these years and hours volunteering your time to a cause that is so near and dear to you. You started it after our dad lost his battle to cancer and have been dedicated to it ever since. You bring to it your sense of hard-work, your dedication, your leadership skills, your motivation to others, your creative spirit, your selfless devotion of your time, and your sense of humor!

And here is Karen along with her sense of humor, wearing the fun hat that she was planning to pull out of her "bag-of-tricks" when we started getting tired and wearing thin on lack of sleep. She put it on along with her sad face the next morning after church.

And here is her happy face.

                              Sad. Happy. Sad. Happy. Sad. Happy. Sad. Happy. Sad. Happy.

Her team for Relay is made up of her church members and this year, us. As we were all leaving the field in disappointment, one of the men from her church stopped to talk with Karen. He said we should all come to church the next morning. I said most of us only had the clothes we were wearing besides another casual jean outfit, because some were only planning to stay the weekend. He and his wife said..."just wear what you are wearing." So we did! We all donned our ties and our relay t-shirts and added name tags, so that we would not be mistaken for Karen. (That happened on the field many times. Some one  walked up to me with a smile ready to ask a question, then got a funny look on her face and said "oh...umm...I thought you were...Karen?" )

I had a little fun with this silly hat photo and posted it here. I know that you, Karen, won't mind( I hope) because you will do anything for a laugh and anything to raise more money for the American Cancer Society. Because their night was cut significantly short and money is raised though different activities and sales throughout the night, their proceeds will be down for this year. That is why we all "won" so many of the raffle prizes. We had each put in a number of tickets, but the raffle didn't have the chance to run through the full hours of the evening, so our chances were greater. Like I said at the beginning of this post, can you remember that far back?... the raffle luck gods were raining down on us. Literally.

So, I'm linking Karen's American Cancer Society page here. If anyone is inspired to do so, she/they are still accepting donations. If you would like to donate to her team I know that she, and all of us sisters, would greatly appreciate it. All the money goes to the ACS.

Karen, thank-you again from the bottom of my soggy heart. This is a great thing that you do to honor Dad's memory and to try to make a difference. You are appreciated.

~norma~

note: the photo of us standing around the table with Helen directing the choir?  We were singing. A  silly song about a skunk that my dad so enjoyed having his girls line-up and perform and another song in which I will add the words here...

     "We're all together again,
        we're here we're here.
     We're all together again,
         we're here we're here.
     And who knows when,
         we'll be all together again,
      singing all together again,
          we're here we're here."