Sometimes it's hard to remember why you're training for this event or the other, or it's hard to stay focused on the end result six weeks before it actually occurs. For instance, I just completed my first triathlon of the season merely a week ago, and I'm already struggling to remember the euphoric feeling at the finish line that makes all the intense training in the heat weeks beforehand worth it. I find myself in the middle of a workout with sweat pouring in buckets down my face and the heat of the sun burning more freckles on my skin thinking, "Wait... why am I doing this???"
Sometimes you only need a reminder of the value of your venture to again willingly push yourself to your limits and beyond.
A couple weeks ago I watched The Notebook for the first time. By myself.
(Allow me to preface what follows by saying I don't often cry during movies. Or at least, I didn't used to. Getting older has turned me into a bit more of a sap. But I still usually manage to keep a straight face during flicks that turn most other women into a puddle of mush.)
I bawled. Like a baby. It wasn't the ongoing love story that triggered my sympathetic nerve. It wasn't the setting, the music, or the actors' great abilities either. It was the fact that the poor woman had dementia in the end and didn't recognize any of her family members. The movie did not state that she had Alzheimer's disease; but she could have. The state she was in and her inability to be who she had always been broke something within me.
I think, if we are honest with ourselves, we all fear death to some extent. Even those of us who have given our lives over to the very Giver of Life and know the promise that awaits us hereafter still have a distant hesitation about death because it is unfamiliar to us. We have never experienced it. But we all will.
What tears me up, though, is the thought of someone going to meet death not knowing their loved ones, not being able to remember who they are or where they came from. Even the most horrid circumstances of fatalities - car wrecks, cancer, violence, freak accidents, etc. - at least do not rob the victim of their memories, their loves, or their self-awareness.
But Alzheimer's does.
This is a bit morbid, I know, but it helps to put things into perspective. Both of my husband's grandfathers died of/with Alzheimer's. If it's hereditary, that means he has two times the chance of a normal person to end up with the disease; and that means it could be me in the man's shoes from The Notebook trying to help Frac remember who he is and who I am many years from now. Not only him, but potentially my father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law too, all of whom I love dearly. It's scary to think about. But what can I do? Currently, there is no cure for it and treatments for it are hit-and-miss at best. Even the diagnosis of it is iffy at times, and often isn't determined until after the person dies. Right now it just seems like a silent, indestructible killer with the number of victims growing yearly. So what can I do?
I can ride.
Three years ago I rode in my first Ride to Remember event. I can't say why exactly I did it - more for the challenge than anything else, I think. But now, in my third year, it holds much more meaning. It's a step in protecting my future, the future of my husband, the future of my family, and the futures of the blessed students I teach. It's an investment into the health of those I love. One day I may not even remember that I did the ride; but, hopefully my efforts, along with those of the other cyclists will instead help make Alzheimer's disease itself a distant memory of the past.
Wondering what you can do?
You can donate money to the cause. We'll do the hard work of riding across the state in July. You can do the easy part by making all of our pedaling worth it.
www.aridetoremember.kintera.org
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