My family benefited from Crossing the Finish Line (CFL), now For Pete's Sake Cancer Respite Foundation (FPS), over six years ago and to see them now receiving help from from a company with true integrity such as Southwest is amazing.
My mother had a relapse with cancer when I was 18 and to say our relationship was strained at that point in our lives would be an understatement. CFL/FPS entered our lives two years into my mom's treatment when, like the Pannone's, they sent my family to Orlando. By then, the treatment had shown it's effect on her and she had begun forgetting things such as my brother's and sister's names, to other simple things like her birthday. Being the stubborn kid I was at the time, I hadn't spoken to my mom beyond a courtesy "Hello" in over a year. I tried my hardest to get out of this opportunity that CFL, essential strangers, was trying to give my family. Luckily, I did not succeed.
If it were not for that week away I would, to this day, be suffocated with guilt that few ever experience. Fortunately, for that one week we spent in Orlando, I got the mom I knew before cancer, back. It was the little things that came back (watching Seinfeld together every night, and her making fun of my dad for cleaning while on vacation) that made the trip memorable. For a week, we were the family we used to be again.
3 weeks later my dad had come home in the morning, after spending most of the night in the hospital, in tears telling my brother and I that she wouldn't be leaving the hospital, and that the doctors had told him to start gathering the family to say goodbye.
That night I spent the night in the hospital laying in an uncomfortable chair next to my mom as the rest of the family had decided to go home and rest. I wrote, I sobbed, I apologized and slept for 20 minutes total until my family came back the next morning. My mom woke up for the last time that morning. That's when my dad told her that I had spent the whole night with her and never left. Had it not been for the gift CFL gave my family 3 weeks earlier, my mom's last words to me would have killed me and haunted me the rest of my life.
After my dad told her I had stayed the whole night, she looked at me with that glare she used to get when she was trying her hardest not to crack a smile and plainly said, "I hate you." Had it not been our trip to Orlando, and those nights sitting on the couch in the CFL house quoting lines from Seinfeld before they were even spoken, I would have felt the same way most people reading this feel. But that week we were away, I realized my mom was still there, buried underneath the cancer, the chemo and the constant hospital visits. That's what helped me smile when she told me she hated me; because that's what she always said when she loved what you did for her and appreciated beyond what you could imagine but hated that you were nice to her or suffered on her behalf. To this day I know, she loved me, regardless of how we were to each other, because for one week I got my mom back.
That's what these trips do, and I am but one kid amongst a million out there in a similar situation where a parent or loved one has cancer. So from the bottom of this cynic's heart, thank you FPS and Southwest for showing me and others like me that there is good out there; that there are things beyond cancer.
Thank you.
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