Author: Robert W. Nelson (Sacramento, CA, USA)
Contact: robsmf at yahoo dot com
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Categories: [love]  [reflection]  [thankful]  

My good friend Margie, had brought me to her mom's place before, but this was different. Her mother Jo, living with her second go around at Cancer (a different kind), was finishing up another hard round of chemotherapy and things weren't looking good as they had before. As a matter of fact, it wasn't looking good at all.

This picture was taken for Jo, when her son Dave and his fiance Rena had come to visit from San Diego. Jo loves sunflowers and they were lovingly placed in a vase right away so Jo could enjoy them. I decided to snap some family photo's of the family and then quietly took the sunflowers out to the sidewalk in the front of the house and laid on the grass and snapped some pictures with my Kodak LS443 which produced this one.

Since flowers don't last very long, I wanted Jo to have those sunflowers for as long as she could, and she did.

Jo has this picture today, a year later hanging on the wall in her special room. Cancer hasn't gone away for either of us, but its the small things in this crazy world that count. Love, family, friends -- the little things, and pictures that mean a 1,000 words.

Jo is 58, and I, Robert, am 37. We have four things in common that I can think of off the top of my head. We both love flowers, we both value our family and friends, we both live with Cancer, and we value life and each day we are given to live another. My extra special thought is that I am glad that Jo is here today... and believe that those sunflowers brought by Rena that August day in 2003 and kept in memory by a simple picture worth a thousand words is, in part, the reason she pulled through at that moment to pull herself through another day, week, and month.

The American Cancer Society is sponsoring the "Relay for Life" somewhere near you in June to celebrate suvivorship and raise money for research and programs in YOUR area throughout America and Canada. The "Relay for Life" represents the hope that those lost to cancer will never be forgotten, that those of us who face cancer will be supported, and that one day, cancer will be eliminated.

Its the only thing I know I have. Hope, and that is one thing no one can take away. I love you Jo. Keep hope in your heart.

Other submissions by this author: :  Soaring sunset  :

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