Light the Night

Our family, team Bright Tomorrows, attended the Lymphoma, Leukemia Society annual walk last night. Sugar House park was filled with people! They had music and Rubios food and lots of stuff for the children leukemia patients like bouncy house, face painting, cotton candy and popcorn. We got t-shirts and was able to make a banner for our team to carry during the walk. We all got balloons, red for supporters, white for survivors and gold for those that have passed away. We all walked as a team around the park with our balloons illuminated and behind our sign. As we were all collected waiting for the walk to start, I couldn't help but notice that there weren't very many white survivor balloons. Especially adult ones. There were alot of gold. That to be perfectly honest scared me a little because it brought reality into it. Of course there wouldn't be very many adult survivors of lymphoma, especially the kind that Stephen has. It brought tears to my eyes as we started the walk and as I looked ahead and saw Stephen holding Kaiah and pointing out the big balloon arch I caught a sadness in his eye. It only lasted a second then of course the smiles and laughter took over but I saw it, I know it got to him too. The walk was kinda long (1 1/2 miles) so we had time to walk and talk. As we arrived at the finish line, the staff and volunteers were cheering and clapping for each team. Kaiah and Ari thought they were clapping for them personally and started smiling and clapping back! Our little team was able to raise $400.00 thanks to donations from Gary and Robyn, Donnie and Lynn and Mary and Dave! And of course Kamie selling candy bars! When we left they were still tallying up the totals but at that point were up to over $200,000.00! We are definitely going to make this a yearly tradition but hopefully will not have a gold balloon on our team for years and years and years! A special thank you to Stephen's sister Mary and for his brother Donnie and Lynn who came in support. It means more to him than I think anyone will ever know. I can't help but feel a sense of sadness though, his brother asked "where are the rest of our siblings". Stephen replied "maybe they are busy". But then he made eye contact with me and in his eyes, it hurt. I hope that in the future, there is no more look like that. A special thanks to our team who was there - Kasie, Jer, Kaiah and baby, Kamie, Alex, Ari, Jaylene, Bill, Mary, Donnie and Lynn. Thanks for loving Stephen. Here's to tons more of Bright Tomorrows and only white balloons....no gold.