The Run to Cure Cancer

Lake Effect

by Brian D. Meeks

Chapter 33 Day 33

The day’s running started earlier than normal. Steve finished his thirty-third day.

There wasn’t much else to talk about. He was alone on the road, with his thoughts, with his pain. It helps to have something to do, even a thing so challenging as running all day. The heat was bad, but even it couldn’t pull his mind away from the cruelty of life.

The run is about cancer, beating it, living with the challenges that come from that battle, and moving on. It is also about celebrating life. That is what we do as humans. It is as natural as breathing. Something about our makeup drives us to remember every wonderful event and then to cast an indelible image that will remain for the rest of our days. We store those memories away for they will surely be needed down the road.

There will be a moment when Steve will be reminded of his fun Uncle Mike and for an instance he won’t recall the cancer. That instance will pass and just as quickly it will hit him in the gut all over again. That is when those memories will help.

We carry them along through our lives. The stories are told to the young, in the hopes that they will hold on to them, too. It is the struggle to remain, the fight against the inevitable, the battle that can’t be won, that boils within us, because time is the only one that can go on forever.

Today, there was beauty all around. Lake Michigan looked cool and inviting in the summer sun. It mattered little. Steve’s uncle Mike, who had been given two months and then two weeks, died today, after only two days.

Steve will miss his uncle. We will all grieve for him and his family. The fight will go on, it must.

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