"Stand Up to Cancer"

Okay honestly three seconds into this and I may cry...

Two rapid thoughts came into my mind

1) Most likely one of the most impactful advertisements I have ever seen on TV. Maybe it was the eloquent voice of Sidney Poitier, but the sheer act of people just standing up was enough to get my attention.

It's one of those moments where the hair raises on your arm or on the back of your neck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atKVaG4nIVo

Watch if you haven't

2) And the second thought that raced in was my dad. I always remember being a younger self twiddling my thumbs and scrunching my Velcro shoes as I spent most of my days at the hospital "visiting dad". I didn't understand why we were really there. I mean I knew, but when I look back so guilty that I felt "annoyed" wasting my days staring at white sterile walls and not being able to go outside and stretch my adolescent arms. Looking back... and am so frustrated with myself that I didn't get to know my father before I lost him.

During that time I kept a journal in 3rd grade. 5-9-88

Today is May 8.1988 in Feb my dad went to the hospatil he wasn't doing that good in ten days he died my mom was crying really much so was my brother I was to... when I was crying I was crying but when i stop it was like i was a frog or something.

I didn't know but my teacher at the time lost her father that year. Almost 10 years later when I saw Nahnie again, she pulled me aside and said how much she cried that night when she read my entry, still such a young girl dealing with something so tremendous.

Years later when my uncle was diagnosed with cancer the idea of being in a hospital was so frightening that I waited weeks to visit him there. I honestly couldn't bare the idea of seeing my father in him ... and being vulnerable again. When I finally gathered the strength to go there I cried... I sobbed on his hospital bed. He was no longer conscious and the reality set in that I would lose another one of my family members to cancer.

I think "Samantha" from Sex in the City said it best, "cancer isn't so hullarious".

I will donate this evening and I hope others will as well. I can't say I won't ever lose someone to cancer again but if I never have to... I will be alright.