ENCORE #165! – Biking and Walking and Haircuts for Causes

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer in March of 2011, there was a deafening silence from the men I knew. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared five years ago in August of 2016…

I have been “funding” for causes ever since I rode in my very first March of Dimes Bike-a-thon in 1972. It was late spring, but the day we started it was snowing. Not blizzarding; not blinding…but snowing.

I finished the twenty-five-mile ride that had taken me around the Minneapolis lakes and out to Anoka. As weary as I was, I realized that I was hooked.

I did a few more of those, a couple of other “-a-thons” and then nothing really for several years.

A dozen years ago, my wife was diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes. I joined several bikes and walks, and one summer, my son and I did the 45-mile bike for diabetes. We did that twice, and one summer I did it alone. The next summer, my son invited me to ride with him on a fund raiser against MS, as a friend of my wife’s passed away because of it.

Then came breast cancer five years ago. There were no “doable” biking events for me then – I was in no shape to do the Susan G. Komen bike-a-thons at the time, so for a while I did nothing.

Three years ago, my school district sponsored the Relay for Life and we finally “came out of the closet”. We’d avoided it before then, though I’d been asked and we’d discussed it. For whatever deep-seated reason, we didn’t feel ready to join the even. We took the big step two years ago (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2014/05/guys-gotta-talk-about-2the-relay-for.html) and then again last summer (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2016/05/relay-for-life-2016-today.html). The group of young people with whom we walked was vital and dedicated. It was delightful!

I have yet another cause now – Alzheimer’s. My father was diagnosed a few years ago, and now the disease rears its hideous head on a near-daily basis. He lives in a memory care unit, but the sad fact is that there is absolutely nothing that can be done for him. Though undiagnosed, I think my mother suffered from it as well; though with her other issues, I’m not sure if it was a cause or effect. I only that know she’s been in a major fog for months.

I realized that after she passed a week ago, there were far too many “causes” in my life; far too many medical problems with events to raise money to fight for a cure.

While I’ve recently started to feel a pressure of “can this go on?”, I also realize that while we do in fact, live in the 21st Century and there are many things we CAN do; there are still so many things we CAN’T do that it can seem overwhelming…

The wife of a pastor of mine once said, “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

I pondered this for many years, not really understanding it. Now approaching my 60th birthday, I think I may have a handle on it: I will keep this blog rather than start another. I only have so many candles and I’ve tended this one for the past five years. While it’s not comfortable, it’s a candle I now know well – and it’s a candle that has truly pierced the darkness. I will keep lighting this one for a long time to come. (What about the haircuts? That was part of a fundraiser for the high school theater department and covering the event earned me my first piece of PAID writing!)

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