Celebrate. Remember. Fight Back.
“CANCER SUCKS,” read a relayer’s t-shirt in black block letters.
Indeed, cancer directly impacts millions and millions of people around the world. Whether it is your mom, dad, uncle, aunt, grandma, grandpa, brother, sister or friend, the list goes on and on, and cancer unfortunately never sleeps.
So why should we?
More than 1,000 BU students celebrated those affected by cancer, remembered loved ones lost and fought back against cancer last weekend from 6 p.m. on Saturday to 6 a.m. Sunday in the annual Relay for Life at the Track and Tennis Center.
“Each year, more than 3.5 million people in 5,000 communities in the United States, along with additional communities in 20 other countries, gather to take part in this global phenomenon and raise much-needed funds and awareness to save lives from cancer,” according to the Relay for Life website.
With the luminaria ceremony, tug of war, the “Protect Your Balls” dodgeball tournament, root beer pong, the frozen t-shirt contest, walking countless laps around the track, and so much more, the night was full of fun, challenging and moving activities for all. Many of these were on-site fundraisers. In the end, after months of hard work and fundraising, event coordinator BU Colleges Against Cancer tallied up a total of about $60,000.
For me, participating in Relay for Life wasn’t even a question. Though I admit, I was a little late in registering, considering I had no team to join or lead before meeting my future team members through this year’s BU Alternative Spring Break trip to Atlanta—hence our Relay name Team Hotlanta.
Once I registered our small (but effective!) team of four as Team Hotlanta and attended the final team captain’s meeting, I could hardly contain my eagerness to relay with those who are in some way affected by cancer as well. After all, these past few years have been extremely difficult for me and my family. My grandmother passed away from leukemia three years ago, and my grandfather passed away just a little less than a month ago from neck cancer. It was clear that I had to do something. I had to fight back.
Walking into the Track and Tennis Center decorated in Relay colors and posters reminded me of when I had participated in my first Relay for Life two years ago. People were preparing to camp out for the night with tents, towels, homework, Bananagrams (these were popular) and more. We found our own 8×8 plot of land near the stage where various acts would perform throughout the night, including the Dear Abbeys, Chris Considine and Sharin Toribio.
BU School of Education had a table where you could buy a bracelet and add a bead to it for each lap you walked and/or ran. I only wish I had known about this from the beginning, because I’m sure the bracelet would be complete with beads. I’m not kidding when I say that I woke up feeling sore this morning.
Maybe part of that soreness came from the frozen t-shirt contest, in which we contestants had to thaw t-shirts that had been dumped in water and then chilled in the freezer for three days. And boy did we come up with some creative ways to thaw our t-shirts. Once we had managed to loosen up a part of our t-shirts by simply knocking it repeatedly on the soft and not exactly helpful turf, we would essentially hammer our t-shirts into the ground, using the loose part as the handle, as hard and for as long as our bodies would allow us. Suffice to say, I did not win—nor did my other two team members—though I did manage to thaw mine before they did.
But the most memorable moment of the evening for me was when we all gathered in front of the stage and listened to the speakers’ stories as part of the luminaria ceremony. We were asked to crack our glow sticks if our loved ones were affected by cancer. Hearing one glow stick after another—crack, crack, crack—was the most powerful thing I have experienced. In the end, everyone’s glow sticks lit up, and we all walked around the track with our glow sticks in hand.
Everyone is affected by cancer. But no one should have to go through it alone.
Join BU Colleges Against Cancer, and let us fight against cancer together.