Relay for Life

The annual Relay for Life event benefiting the American Cancer Society was held in town this weekend. For those of you who aren't familiar with this event, teams of people gather from 5 pm one day to 5 am the next, keeping a team member walking on the track (theoretically) for the entire 12 hours. While that is going on teams are also hosting various fundraisers at their campsites, with all of the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society. The event in our town attracts approximately 2,000 people each year and this year the event raised more than $300,000.


Our family began participating in Relay about 4 years ago on the invitation of the family of one of Sarah's friends. The first year our team was just our two families, but the following year Sarah and her friend decided to create a team of their own and the grown-ups from the two families became the default chaperones.


Even though the team was Sarah's, Emma was always an integral part of the team. We had come up with the, shall we say, unique, idea of having a wedding booth for our campsite fundraiser which we dubbed "Married to the Cause".  Sarah's teammates were skeptical that this idea would be warmly received, but we were confident. We had seen this concept go over well at camp and we were sure it would be a hit with the teen and pre-teen scene at Relay. Because this was a foreign concept to the other team members, it was our family, Peter, Emma, Sarah and me, who had to launch the wedding booth the first year. Emma was fabulous in the role of the clergyman, masterfully imitating the clergyman from the Princess Bride, her favorite movie. Even though each year she seemed to spend more and more time with her own friends at Relay, Emma always took a spin as the clergyman and got an enthusiastic reception from the betrothed.


Needless to say, doing Relay this year without Emma made an already bittersweet occasion all the more so. Lots of things were going through my mind. As I watched giddy teens line up to marry each other, enthusiastically donning the classically horrid selection of bridesmaid dresses and other wedding apparel that we offered, it struck me as a quintessentially Emma affair. Emma never missed an opportunity to dress up - the more outrageous or overdone, the better. And Emma was all about love, so the idea of a booth where you express your affection to one, two or twenty people in an evening is Emma at her best.


But there was also the tremendous, heart-wrenching sense of loss. Relay 2009 is one of the vivid memories of Emma, just 2 weeks before she died, that plays over and over for us. And while we honored our friends lost to cancer and friends and family who have battled cancer, it was Emma who was at the center of our thoughts that evening. I was deeply touched by Sarah's young teammates who understood that and came up to us after the Luminaria ceremony to give a hug and let us know that they were thinking about Emma, too.

This year's event also brought the irony of last year's event into sharp focus - that Emma could enthusiastically participate in an event that is all about saving lives, and two weeks later take her own. It's incomprehensible.


Last fall, I listened to a speech at the local Out of the Darkness walk which raised money for suicide prevention. The speaker was a mother who talked about the daughter she had lost to suicide. Like Emma, she was smart, talented, connected to family, friends, colleagues, and her church - but that was not enough. And then the mother spoke the words that have stuck with me. "When you think about all that she had going for her - her family, her friends, her religion, her hobbies, and a job that she loved; it makes you realize that suicide is a very formidable foe." Boy, is that true. It's a foe that is the third leading cause of death for people ages 15-24 and the second leading cause of death for college students. It's a foe that claims nearly as many lives each year as breast cancer and more than twice as many as HIV/AIDS. It's a foe that, so far, we've been too afraid to challenge.


So I walked away from Relay this year dreaming about a day when 2,000 people from my hometown will  raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and gather together on a football field to stare down a foe that we've been afraid to look in the eye; to issue a challenge to suicide and provide the resources to back that challenge up, just like we are doing for cancer; to dream of a time when there will be more answers about suicide than questions; and a time when the celebration of lives saved outshadows the mourning for lives lost.