Why I Decided to Cycle 180 Miles
I’m uncertain how to even start this. The emotions? The energy? The loss? The pain, literally in your butt (!), from sitting on a bicycle seat for hours on end?
In November 2012, my aunt passed away, her body consumed by breast cancer. Six months later, we lost my cousin — her daughter, aged only 42 years. Aunt Judy’s illness started with a limp: “Hip pain,” she said. But it was painful for a different reason: the cancer had spread into her bones, and it would not respond to treatments. This while she was caring for her daughter, my cousin Susan, fighting her own battle against the same cancer. Aunt Judy had shuttered her retirement dreams and moved back from the beach to Pittsburgh to care for Susan during treatments. She would eventually leave Pittsburgh and resume her life in North Carolina…but it was a life abbreviated by, dictated by, and finally taken by, cancer.
As for Susan, she had appeared to make something or a recovery. A few months of normalcy. Able to live on her own, accepted into a new Master’s program… And then it all spiraled into oblivion.
Her battle started about two years before the day she died. When her hip broke. From breast cancer. How the hell does that happen? Does that even make sense?
I witnessed two powerful people taken from us too soon. One was powerful for her unrelenting belief in a higher power, her boundless love. The other was so powerful in her pursuit of knowledge, and faith in other cultures, and peoples, in the alternative approach.
In the end, maybe all it bought them was a few extra days. Who knows. It certainly didn’t curtail the suffering, or make their end of days any less painful. I wish I didn’t know that, or believe it myself…but cancer hurt them, and took them from us.
Susan had a gazillion friends. She loved meeting people. Learning things.
She was more than my cousin. She was my best friend.
She had many best friends, and I don’t dare to pretend I was the only who felt that way about her. That was clear if you were at her memorial service.
The point is this:
If I can do anything to help people avoid such loss and suffering, I’m in.
So I’ll sit and pedal and suffer over 180 miles. I’ll physically push myself harder than I have ever pushed myself. And when I hurt, I turn my mind to Aunt Judy and to Susan. I ride for them. So that others might not have to know the pain of loss. The pain of illness.
And I am grateful that I am here.
That I can do something.
That we can do something together. Something big.
We are faster together, and together, we can make a real difference in the battle against cancer.
I ride for all of us.
