ESPN every
year holds a fake gala that they call the ESPY awards. ESPY of course stands for “Ewww, Sports
Performers? Yuck!” which is an immature acronym and I admittedly didn’t think
it through whilst fabricating it from the ether whatsoever. Aside from self-aggrandizing sports figures,
who don’t get enough attention already through their lucrative contracts, their
lucrative endorsement deals, their lucrative side investments, and their
lucrative percentages from their lucrative commercials, the ESPYs are crucial
because they fill the one day of the year where there’s no real sports going on
and they need to put something on the air in Bristol. (Hey, anything’s better than putting on a
repeat of a WNBA game, right?
Right?! Ahem.)
However there
is a bright spot to the ESPYs and that is the day long auction and awareness given
for the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
The V Foundation has to date given over $150 million towards cancer
research and is a very worthwhile organization.
It was set up by Jim Valvano and ESPN while Valvano was fighting his own
battle with cancer. Sorry for taking a
serious note all of a sudden, but ESPN’s support of the V Foundation is one of
the nobler things about the network and I applaud them in their efforts.
So as I was
listening to the ESPN radio auctions and stories about those who had survived cancer,
those who had succumbed to cancer, and those who were afflicted by cancer in
their families, I realized that the anniversary of my own mother’s death from
cancer is coming up. Perhaps with that
mindset, the stories I was hearing on the air affected me more than
normal. I was immediately transported
back to 2000 and watching my mother fight, struggle, and ultimately yield to
the cancer that had taken over her body.
She fought
that disease with ultimately great faith and with great humor given the
circumstances. I will always be
influenced by her ability to handle something that physically, emotionally, and
spiritually draining. How she and my
father were able to even cope was amazing in and of itself to me. If and when I ever have to face similar
situations, I only pray that I will be able to have just a tenth of the courage
and resolve that they displayed.
But rather
than dwell on those final days, I want to use this as a moment to remember one
of my mother’s great legacies in my life: her love of movies. My mother thoroughly enjoyed film and
introduced me to the classics that she enjoyed.
My parents would set up the VCR (look it up, kids) and would tape movies
from whatever the local network affiliate would air during their Late Late Show
(look it up again, kids). We got most of
the films of the Marx Brothers this way and this is how I became the only 2nd
grader at Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran to quote Groucho lines and appear to
be far wittier than I ever would be. Hey,
if you have to steal, then steal from
the best!
